


Without Leave

by vwright



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:31:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vwright/pseuds/vwright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following death threats from law enforcement at large, A.D.A. Barba decides to take a leave of absence to secretly pursue the group that's targeting him. It's meant to be a solo mission, until one SVU detective finds himself more involved than either expected. The investigation brings to light truths about themselves and the force that puts their lives at risk. </p><p>Takes place after the events of the season 17 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction. Characters are property of NBC Universal.

There’s nothing quite like the feel of consciousness creeping into your brain on a Monday morning and wondering if someone put arsenic in your coffee. Rafael Barba was becoming accustomed to this feeling, though the thrill, if one could call it that, never seemed to lose its edge. The threat of imminent death around every corner sharpened his awareness, and to an extent he thought it might actually be doing him some good. Even when he was tired, he was wide awake with the simmering knowledge that there were at least six people - whose faces he knew - wanted him dead, and undoubtedly more lurking behind them. With the current trajectory of his paranoia, he might be able to cut out caffeine altogether in a week’s time, he thought.

The courthouse, once a haven for the A.D.A., a roost he ruled with the confidence of two double-entendre’d barn animals, now felt like a lion’s den. There were officers at every doorway, in every courtroom, striding freely in every hall. Only the day before had two of the boys in blue bumped his shoulders on either side as he studied a file on the way to an arraignment. By the time he looked up, spun around to maybe catch a glimpse of a face or a name tag, they had assimilated into a mass of officers testifying for a case in narcotics. He thought the gesture rather symbolic; the men after him were essentially faceless and nameless - they were part of a larger, solid group that was impenetrable from within a house of law. What with law being the counselor’s backbone, the situation left him understandably handicapped. However, he was far from spineless.

Barba’s office was on the third floor, a cozy corner suite that he earned after a high-profile win against a conservative (archaic) politician who had raped no less than three male prostitutes on the campaign trail. The privacy of the upper floors was comforting, though when a cop did appear by chance, leaving another A.D.A.’s office, his adrenaline levels experienced a fun, buzzy spike.

His secretary wasn’t at her desk, which normally would be cause for alarm or a long-repeated reprimand, but today it boded only of productivity. The tasks he had bestowed upon her that morning undoubtedly bewildered her at first, though when she riddled out the reason behind his request for over 12 forms and the 6 special permissions to expedite the processing of the 12 forms, she seemed relieved. Tellingly so, Barba thought, and he wondered just how long her resentment for his dismissive view on vacations had been brewing.

He sat at his desk and laid his eyes on the row of forms placed on top, all with handy neon-colored stickers pointing to where he needed to initial and sign. He wielded his engraved fountain pen, the amber-marbled one he bought himself as a treat for his fifth year of practicing law, and got to work. In earlier days, he was keen on buying himself reminders that he had made it - ascended to a level of success that meant one could afford items such as monogramed cufflinks, latently purchased class rings, and fine crystal bourbon decanters to serve to guests, instead of drinking tecate from a can like the men he grew up around. More recently he had scaled back his naive shows of extravagance to soft italian leather briefcases on birthdays or the occasional dinner-for-one at a three-star Michelin restaurant uptown. Still, he wondered if this coded arrogance was the kind of thing that incensed his blue collar would-be assassins, or if they truly and blankly wanted his head.

He went through the stack mechanically, signing off on every page of the thick documents. As a lawyer himself, Barba felt it safe to flip through and sign without reading the pages, and besides, he was well aware of what he was doing and its terms. He only paused at the xeroxed copy of the handwritten letter he had penned the night before, in a fevered rush as to not lose courage halfway through. In it, he pleaded in more cowardly words than he would ever utter aloud his need for rest, reflection, and safety in his current state of personal crisis. His bosses would surely understand his fear and paranoia after multiple death threats, though he despised the images that floated to his brain of his higher-ups smiling, signing off on his request while thinking to themselves, _pansy._ He harnessed his fury into banked motivation, with the knowledge that by the time he was finished, there’d be no one in the New York state legal system who wouldn’t be aware of his cutting finesse and blunt supremacy.

He spent the next thirty minutes packing a box with things from his office. He’d have no need for any of the things he put in the box - anything looking like work would arouse suspicion about his supposed break, but he wasn’t one for littering his office with sentimental or overly personal items either. However, he figured walking out empty handed would look odd if not paint him as more soulless than people already presumed, and so he packed pricier items to take with him under the guise of paranoia of theft. It would win him no points with his secretary, but he was fairly certain she was a lost cause anyway.

The woman herself arrived not ten minutes later, nearly bumping into Barba in the entryway.

“Oh, you’re here,” she said, startled and hiding an opinion behind a practiced smile.

“Just for a few moments longer,” Barba replied, gesturing with a nod to the box in his hands. “I put all the paperwork in the file on my desk, everything should be in order. If there’s anything missing or if someone needs to speak to me, you know how to reach me.”

“Of course, I’ll be sure to file those straight away. I already got the rush papers processed so your leave should be cleared by the end of the day.”

“Thank you,” Barba said with a pursed smile.

“My pleasure,” she replied. They stood facing one another, his secretary blocking the doorway. Her expression was blank and it took a considerable amount of strength for him not to make a show of stepping around her.

As he took a step forward, Barba’s secretary cleared her throat, and said with false confidence, “I think it’s really great, that you’re finally taking some time off. You deserve it.”

 _Sarcasm or pining for a raise?_ He wondered, though when her soft smile didn’t fade he thought maybe he had been a bit harsh. He might need her over the next few months, and it’d be wise to make an ally of her.

“I’m sure I’ll take advantage of the time.” He moved toward the door again, nearly clearing the threshold.

“Do you have any plans?” she asked.

Barba turned, mouth open as he glanced back and replied, “Oh, plenty.”    


	2. Chapter 2

“Can we try that one more time, but if you could, make sure you don’t say anything about the mother being there. Please. Sorry.”

The counselor gave the detective a crooked smile, genuinely looking for approval. Detective Carisi almost felt sorry for A.D.A. Emory. He actually _had_ felt sorry for her, two hours earlier when they started practicing for trial, but now his patience ran thin.

“Sure, sure. So, uh…”  He wondered what kind of take out he would order when he was finished. If he’d ever be finished. “Could you ask me the question again?”

“Of course! Sorry. So. My question.” Emory looked down at her notes again, finding her place. Not that Carisi thought he could do the job better, but he knew the counselor should have her questions memorized the day before the trial. He said a few hail mary’s for her legal soul at SVU. “Right, here we go. How did you find the victim on the night of the incident?”

“I was not the first officer on arrival, but I was told by SVU detectives that Ms. Scrapelli was initially tied to the bed.”

“What was your first interaction with her? Personally,” Emory added in haste.  

“When I arrived she was in the living room, sitting on the couch.”

“Great…” She scanned her clipboard and brought glasses from a chain around her neck to her eyes. “How-how…” She gestured to the air, finding her words. “How would you say the victim looked, that night?”

“Ms. Scrapelli appeared upset. She was crying, had bruises all around her neck, and she was yelling that the defendant, Mr. Rancroft, had raped her.”

The counselor gave Carisi a thumbs up as she looked for her next question. “Is this common, that a rapist is someone that the victim knows personally?”

Emory leaned her head forward, all but holding back a wink to signal Carisi that this was the most important answer, the one they’d rehearsed three times already. The first time he prefaced his answer with ‘sometimes,’ which the counselor didn’t like. The second time he used too many can’s, could’s, and may’s, which made juries ‘waffly.’ The third time Carisi flubbed his spiel and mentioned the attacker’s motive twice, but in his defense (which was better than her prosecution, if he said so himself), she had tired him out with her sorrys and politeness and letting him get through the whole speech without interrupting. Carisi missed Barba, who would cut off his every other word if he said it wrong, used a misleading inflection, or tried even a synonym instead of the rehearsed speech. Frankly, as a witness, he’d much rather be badgered than coddled. He wasn’t going to object.

“Yes, absolutely. In fact more often than not the rapist is a friend or acquaintance of the victim, who they’ve…” Carisi went down his checklist: statistics, motive, opportunity, brutality of attack. He made sure to keep it in present tense, active voice, emphasis on the rapist, not the victim. “...We’re just lucky that Ms. Scrapelli was as brave as she was to identify her attacker straight away.”

Emory nodded, biting her lips together, pausing almost. Carisi racked his brain. _Statistics, motive, opportunity, brutality - what else is there?_

“Was that okay…?”

“Mhm, mhm.” She looked at her notes, eyes flittering across the bottom over and over.

“Are there more questions—”

“You know, I’m sorry, but can we do that last question just one more time? I’d really love to hear you say the line about how ‘the victims never see it coming.’ Is that okay? Can we try that? Sorry. Please?”

Carisi exhaled a long breath through his nose.

“Thank you!” Emory peeped, tracing with the eraser of her pencil to the line she was to deliver again. Carisi’s eyes unfocused into a glaze, seeing a blurry form of the counselor swatting a fly from the air.

 

* * *

  

He settled on chinese. After scarfing down five wontons, he turned to the last-minute paperwork he’d put off that week with his chow mein. Carisi did the math, and if he finished the reports by 1AM, he’d get a solid four hours of sleep and be ready for court by 7AM. Nothing like labouring into the wee hours of the night on the lord’s day of rest.

Carisi looked around the squadroom; Fin gone, Rollins gone, Dodds’ desk empty. There was a light on in the Lieutenant’s office, but when wasn’t there. He ducked his head down again, took a deep breath, and tried his best to keep his messy scrawl within the boxes on the forms. There was never enough space.

Between the monotony of paperwork and ladeling noodles down his throat, there was still ample space in Carisi’s brain to whine to himself. Emory may have been less than stellar as far as A.D.A.’s go, but it was ridiculous that he was even called to testify. He wasn’t the arresting officer and only interviewed the victim for ten minutes before she was taken to the hospital. Emory assured him that being an SVU detective was good enough, because he had a ‘good face’ and would be likeable to the jury. _Besides_ , she said. _This case is open and shut. Who wouldn’t believe the victim when they’re alive and able to identify their attacker?_ Carisi had a feeling she wouldn’t be long with SVU. Or maybe with the justice system either. One would break her soon enough.

The real reason he was testifying was simply because everyone else was busy. Thanks to seniority rights, Fin got all the fun cases (‘fun’ meaning cases with clear-cut bad guys caught red handed). This week it was a child molester who was already on the registry. Rollins was his de facto partner for most cases, and because the lieutenant was busy warding off 1 PP most days, she became the child-victim’s confidant and interrogation playmate.

That left Carisi. The others were quick to dump grunt work on him like they did before, only now it was without the playful teasing of ‘newbie’ status. The squad’s recovery from Dodds’ death was still a work in progress, and light-heartedness of any kind was scarce. While he appreciated being forever fully integrated into the team, he wished he could simply be sore at his squad instead of feeling guilty for complaining that he was still standing.

Most days he was bored out of his skull, when he wasn’t sickened to his stomach. The only time he ever got group interaction was for gnarly homicides, usually involving children or missing limbs - the kind of thing he left the homicide department to avoid. Ones like those, they needed all the help they could get. Lucky for everyone, they weren’t too often, and unlucky for Carisi, that meant more files, more paperwork, more duty at the front desk.

Carisi counted the remaining pages of the file he had to fill in. Only six more. And then five more of those files sitting underneath that one. He took the pen cap between his teeth and bit down, working on peppering the small black plastic with ridges from his canines. The last thing his conscious mind processed that night was the thought that maybe someday he’d have his own office and a secretary to fill out paperwork for him, and he’d never have to taste the dry mix of bic and saliva in his mouth ever again.  

  
“Rise and shine, Sonny. Get it? Ha ha. It’s a joke.”

Rollins smacked Carisi on the back, moving her loud mouth away from his ear and walking to her desk. Carisi jumped at her voice, though where the energy to move at all came from, he had no idea. The next fifteen seconds ticked by slowly as he processed that he wasn’t in his bed at home.

“Jesus, Amanda, what are you even doing here this time of night?”

“ _Night?_ ” Rollins said with raised eyebrows. “Sweetheart, it’s 5:30AM. I’m starting my shift.”

The crushing weight of his mistake pulled Carisi’s head back down to his desk, where he gently banged it against the tabletop three more times.

“Great,” Carisi sighed. “The jury’s gonna love the fresh-faced SVU detective with drool stains on his tie.”

“Damn, that’s this morning, huh?” Rollins recalled, tone airy and light like she realized it was National Parrot Day. “How was Emory last night?”

Carisi scoffed, brain too sleepy to come up with a fitting enough insult.

“That bad?” Rollins asked.

“She’s the _worst_ , Amanda, the worst. I don’t know how she’s ever gotten through a trial before. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t cry every time the defense objects.”

“Ouch,” Rollins chuckled.

 _Okay_ , Carisi thought, _probably too harsh_. She wasn’t the worst. She just sucked. His brain’s filter was still booting up, and in the meantime, large, half-formed thoughts escaped his mouth like yogurt through a tennis racket.

“Bet you’re missing Barba right about now,” Rollins added.

“Oh man, now there’s a guy who can win a case. He can’t come back soon enough, if you’re asking me.”

“Calm down, love bird, he’s only been gone three weeks.”

“Well it feels like an eternity.” Carisi didn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed, he was so fed up with Emory. “Every day he’s gone, victims and suckers like me have to suffer with inferior counsel. It just ain’t right.”

“He might not come back, you know,” Rollins said, slowly turning herself in a circle on her chair.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Carisi asked, trying to hide the concern from his voice.

“I’m just sayin’, if I was getting death threats and the alternative was sitting on a beach, getting served daiquiris all day in the Cayman Islands, I know which one I’d pick.”

“Is that where he is?”

“So I’ve heard. I know they called off his security detail because he left the country.”   

“Huh,” Carisi answered, trying to imagine life at SVU without the A.D.A. he had come to admire so well. Harder still was trying to imagine Barba sitting on a beach, or relaxing for more than five minutes at a time. More than likely he’d be arguing with the wait staff and threatening litigation to anyone who so much as looked at him funny. “I don’t know. I just don’t peg him as the quitting type.”

“Keep sayin’ your prayers, Carisi, maybe it’ll come true.”

Carisi rolled his eyes and peeled his legs from the pleather seat. He stretched his arms into the air, yawning with a wide, open mouth.

“Well, I’ve risen. Guess it’s time to shine.”

“Good luck, superstar.” Rollins waved him off while digging into a croissant.

“Thanks, I’ll need it.” The sight of food reminded Carisi of his meal the night before, noodles that sat in a lukewarm puddle inside their container on his desktop. He took a whiff of the box, never one to let food go to waste. Unfortunately, the slimy brown slop had a faint smell like crab, despite containing no seafood whatsoever. With a wide sweep of his arm he trashed the leftovers and then brushed off crumbs from his sleeves.

He gave one last parting nod to Rollins before knocking on the lieutenant’s door and poking his head inside. Lieutenant Benson was on the phone, speaking in a placating, even tone to a loud man’s voice on the other end. _Heading out_ , he shout-whispered, and the lieutenant gave him a cursory polite smile and distracted wave between affirmative responses to the phone’s receiver. Carisi gently shut the door behind him and strode out to the elevator, jabbing the L button harder than needed. His whole body needed further waking, and he figured smacking it around a bit might rouse him to alertness. He used his back and shoulder to push through the weighted front doors, though he didn’t feel the force like he knew he should. He’d need something more to get through the next half hour, let alone a trial. He needed coffee (which made him jittery), he needed a change of clothes (which were at his too-far apartment), and he needed to be named Fin Tutuola and actually have a clue about what happened in this rape case. Weighing his options and the possibilities of reality, he decided to start with the coffee.

 

* * *

 

The courthouse was always freezing, even if it was boiling outside. Carisi sat pumping his heel up and down like a quiet jackhammer, unsure if it was an involuntary motion because he was cold or because he was wired from the espresso he had an hour earlier. He didn’t understand how anyone stomached it - the shots tasted miserably bitter and didn’t make him feel any kind of good like a shot of something else might. He’d spent too many nights with study groups before the bar, buzzing with over-caffeination because he preferred it to taking recreational adderall like most of his classmates. Everyone seemed to forget he was a cop, and finally stopped offering the drug after he threatened to call in a buddy from narcotics to bust everybody. It lovingly earned him the nickname ‘Narc’ for the rest of the term. No one called him Sonny there, either.

He waited on the stone bench outside the courtroom for thirty minutes, then thirty more, and another forty - each time he checked his watch he had to squint his eyes hard before they’d focus on the numbers. All things considered he’d gotten more sleep than he thought he would, but it was spent with his body folded in half, and it felt more like he spent the night sustaining a yoga pose than resting. Noises of any kind prompted him to whip his head toward the door, hoping it would be the bailiff ushering him in to testify. The longer he waited, the more it felt like his brain and body were separating into two different planes, like vinaigrette settling into sloshy colored layers. His conscious brain was thick and deadened somewhere deep while his body floated above, bubbling and barely contained.

Carisi rehearsed his speech again and again until the sentences started melting together, and he realized he was actively worsening his memory of it with every repetition. Normally he’d bring a book or play a game on his phone, but his books were at home and his phone was nearly dead. He resigned himself to staring aimlessly down the corridor, occasionally catching the glance of someone walking by. There were a few A.D.A.s he recognized and a few defense attorneys who gave him a look as if they were trying to place his face. He even thought he saw someone who looked like Barba getting on the elevator, if Barba owned jeans and a hoodie and ever left his apartment in anything but a three-piece suit. Also lining the hall were bored jurors among huddled families with worried faces, occasionally making tight-lipped remarks to one another. They were awaiting verdicts. People always had a particular look during the moments when fate was suspended in air before it came crashing down - frightened, with a low-burning flame of hope.

He wanted to win. Carisi barely spoke to this woman but he heard the terror in her voice, saw the bruises and cuts on her face and neck. He wanted Emory’s naive optimism to be the truth. He didn’t want to be just another jaded cop or a jaded lawyer who looked at every victim like they were wasting their time. He was sick of injustice, sick of apathy, and sick of not winning every once in a while. The odds were stacked against him but he’d play his hand, risking the last dregs of his faith if that’s what it took.

The bailiff opened the door and called Carisi inside. He swore on the bible and took a breath, readying to speak Emory’s coached truth.

 

* * *

 

He exited the courtroom feeling winded. The defendant wasn’t a wealthy man and by some stroke of luck managed to get the slimiest and most convincing public defender in the state. Emory’s stale performance as sympathetic prosecutor was fine enough - she even managed to remember all her questions the same as Carisi - but the cross was unrelenting. The defense attorney did his research, managing to plant seeds of doubt into the jury by asking roundabout questions related to the victim’s personal life and bringing up Carisi’s own tours of the New York SVU circuit. He was about as good as a tabloid magazine for smearing their credibility - smarmy and not totally convincing, but something you wouldn’t forget nonetheless. Carisi, brimming with more things to say, ways to defend himself and the victim, felt like a bird getting a blanket thrown over its cage when both sides declared they were finished with the witness.  

After the judge called a recess, Emory made a bee-line to Carisi, telling him to wait for her in her office. On his way out of the courtroom, he noticed the mother of the victim backing Emory into a pillar in the hallway, all but screaming in the A.D.A.’s face. As poorly as she fared in the courtroom, Carisi couldn’t bear to watch the shame dig deeper into Emory’s face as she received a talking-to she knew she deserved. Carisi pressed the button for level 3 on the elevator, fairly certain she wouldn’t make it up to her office by the time court reassembled.  

It had been a while since he’d been to the offices of the courthouse. The last time he could recall was with Rollins, standing over a barely-keeping-it-together Barba. Carisi all but yelled at him for hiding something like death threats from the squad for nine months. _Death threats,_ he lectured the A.D.A. _You could’ve died._ Without a beat Barba responded, _yes, I do believe that’s implied in the term,_ but Carisi saw the embarrassment and regret in his darting eyes. It felt wrong, seeing the counselor with anything other than boredom or conviction on his face. Though Barba hid it well, it felt a little like a kid walking in on their parent crying. Carisi pretended like he didn’t notice, and Barba pretended like he wasn’t aware that Carisi saw through the facade.   

The hall was shockingly quiet, carpeted flooring silencing even his footsteps. Lunch hour was likely the reason for the abandoned landscape. He let his eyes catch a glimpse of each office as he passed, checking nameplates on his search for Emory’s. He stole tiny frames of insight on each occupant in the split second he walked by, noting posters or framed awards and licenses. Those who put up family photos versus generic ones of skylines, old art, or cheesy inspirational quotes. He drew a blank when trying to construct his own hypothetical office as a future lawyer. The prospect seemed to stretch farther and farther away in his mind’s eye the closer he got to accomplishing it. He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant for him, psychologically, but he wasn’t an expert on those kinds of things and bid it to the ‘do not touch’ corner of his mind.

By the time he started turning the corner, he still hadn’t reached Emory’s office. It occurred to him that he’d never been to her office before, and he might not even be on the correct floor. Drawing nearer to the door, part of him wondered if he agreed to meet Emory just for this. He didn’t need to read the name on the wall to know whose office he stood before.

Nestled into the corner was the A.D.A.’s - _his_ A.D.A.’s - office. Carisi missed making the trek there and back during the last stages of a case. He missed the feeling of confidence before going into trial, knowing with certainty that the most competent man on the job was in their corner. That the good guys stood a fighting chance.

And only because he was so alone in the hall, he allowed himself the indulgence of leaning into the window on the door and peeking into the counselor’s office. Most of the view was of the secretary’s desk, in the entryway before Barba’s actual office. There were papers out on her desk and he wondered what she was put to work doing, now that Barba was gone. _Gone,_ such an odd thought. He was struck by the urge to see into Barba’s office proper, and had to crouch and angle himself near the door knob to get access.

It looked the same, minus some things he couldn’t place missing from the desk. A smile tugged at his mouth remembering the hours he’d spent there, bothering the counselor into kicking him out. He’d stand over Barba’s desk as he tried to work, asking whatever idiotic questions that came to mind just to linger a little longer, glean some kind of knowledge or air or observation that he could catalog to use for himself later. It was close to hero worship, he knew, the way he clung onto the counselor’s every word and move despite Barba’s fervent effort to shrug him off, but it was worth it. Carisi figured if he could manage a passing imitation of Barba as a lawyer, it would give him at least all the false confidence he’d need to succeed.

He only got to look and reminisce for about twenty seconds, before his vision was obscured by something dark and close to the glass. Then he was struck by something else. It was a door knob, with its rounded edge striking his eye socket like a venn diagram. The shock of it and its force was blinding for a few seconds as he reeled back and swore. He heard a gasp of breath from above him, and tried to look up with his one functional eye to identify the party.

Even if both his eyes had been working, he might not have believed it at first. Staring down at him was none other than assistant district attorney Rafael Barba, in a Harvard hoodie and sneakers.       

“No flipping way,” he started, gobsmacked and starting to laugh.

“Shut up,” Barba hissed.

Carisi laughed again, taking in the expression of pure, wide-eyed shock on the other man’s face. “Nice to see you too, counselor.”

“Shut _up,_ Carisi. Are you okay?” Before the detective could make any response, Barba jumped in again. “Never mind, just shut up. Get in here. Now.”

“I’m sorry?” Carisi asked, failing to understand why the counselor kept whispering in the empty hall. The pain around Carisi’s eye was dull and throbbing down to his skull, but it was surprisingly undistracting.

Barba pulled him up by the arm that wasn’t clutching his bruised eye, and pushed him through the threshold. Carisi started to speak again when Barba brought a finger to his lips and shut the door slowly without a sound.

Then he rounded on the detective, confronting him with boldfaced panic.

“How the hell did you find me?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't be bothered to research the exact look of the various locations and sets, so use your imagination if things aren't described as how they look in the show.

Barba had little time to worry about the structural soundness of Carisi’s skull, as he was still reeling that the man was standing there at all.

He’d been careful. Exceedingly so, taking every precaution he could think of to conceal his presence on the continent. He stopped his mail, bought a burner phone, kept the blinds drawn, paid only in cash. He waited in the stairwell for twenty minutes before daring to approach his office, certain that all the lawyers on his end of the hall were out and unlikely to see him.

Yet there was Carisi, plain and brazen as day, ambushing him with a broad smile and a voice that would wake people sleeping in the next hemisphere.

“How the hell did you find me?” he demanded. Barba needed answers, faster than Carisi could give them. It made the difference between whether he had to change up his disguise or change his address.

“Find you? You hit me in the face with your door.”

“Did you follow me here?”

“No, I was just…” Carisi trailed off, eyes darting to the side. Barba’s heart hammered as he waited for an explanation. “I was uh, testifying. Downstairs.”

“Did you see me downstairs, then follow me?”

“No. Well, I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t follow you.” Carisi’s mouth tilted down in one corner, and his eyebrows drew together in a slight pinch. He was defensive. He was lying.

“Why are you up here?”

Carisi looked relieved, as if he were an actor flailing on stage and Barba had fed him his next line. “Emory. She sent me up here. Wanted me to talk to her.”  

“Who’s Emory?”

“She’s the new A.D.A. A real piece of work, I’ll tell you that.”

“If you were going to see the new A.D.A., why were you lurking outside of my office?” Barba’s question packed its punch in the anger he withheld. Though barely restrained, he kept his panic trapped in his throat, and the silences between each word breathed the real accusation: _stop   lying   to   me_

Carisi shifted his weight from one foot to another, a hand landing on his hip. “I got lost, okay? I don’t know where her office is, and I was trying to gain my bearings, or… yeah.”

It was believable enough, except it still wasn’t the truth. Not all of it. Barba tried to clear his head. Questions ran through the processes of his mind like a school of fish swimming through a stream. Crowding his logical, trained patterns of rationality were bright red questions flashing _what isn’t he saying, why is he here, what does he know, can I trust him?_

Carisi cut through the silence. “But I’m glad I did wander over here. You’re a real sight for sore eyes.” Carisi dabbed at his brow and laughed. “Literally.”

Barba considered his options. There was a window on the other side of the room, but he wasn’t sure if it opened and whether he was strong enough to wrestle the detective out of it. There was a slightly dulled letter opener sitting on his desk that if he reached around Carisi, he could sink it into his kidney. He thought it a bit severe; stabbing a cop would hardly be inconspicuous.

“So when did you get back?” Carisi asked with a sheepish clearing of his throat.

“What?” Barba asked, distracted, grasping at ways to dispose of the detective.

“Cayman Islands, right? How long’s that flight?”

It occurred suddenly to Barba that Detective Carisi knew absolutely nothing.

“Yes,” Barba replied. He picked a number that sounded convincing. “Five. I flew in yesterday.”

“Back so soon?” Carisi asked.

There was something playful in his voice that Barba couldn’t focus on. He needed to keep his voice level, his face and body relaxed.

“There were things I needed to do here.”   

“Like what?”

If Carisi had ever annoyed Barba before, it was a mere facsimile of the pique it inspired within him now. If he were less panicked, less paranoid, his reply would only be a snide dismissal. He wanted to turn around and say something like _what’s it to you_ or _who wants to know_ but that would be childish if he were an actual child, let alone a man in his forties. He was too drained from adrenaline spiking and crashing rapidly for anything witty, and decided that an all-out refusal to respond would suffice.  

“I have to go.”

Barba knew it was too harsh the second he said it. Carisi’s face fell like a kind, poor child’s disappointment on Christmas morning.

“Oh, ok.” Carisi managed a smile from one side of his mouth. “Well I’ll see you around I guess.” He lifted his palm away from his eye, blinking slowly and squinting as to test its ability.

Barba felt a pang of guilt near his diaphragm. Not as much for hurting the detective’s eye, but rather his ego. He wouldn’t go so far as to say they were friends, but they had a rapport. Barba knew Carisi liked to think it worked toward long sought after camaraderie, while he himself thought of it as something else. Sparring practice maybe, indulgence to his self-esteem, a refresher on beginner’s legal training. Though, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t fond of the back and forth between them. And it was Carisi who he had been most embarrassed to tell, when it was necessary to reveal how scalding the water was that he’d gotten himself into. He looked so disappointed, that someone so smart could be so prideful, so idiotic. He looked a little like he did now.

Barba tried in vain to think of parting words or a gesture that would make his exit less cold and awkward. “Sure,” was all he said, and made for the door.

“You know what,” Carisi started. “I’ll text Rollins and Benson, see if maybe we could all get drinks this week.”

By the time Barba whipped around, Carisi’s phone was already in his hand and typing away.

“Don’t do that,” he barked, standing stock still by the door. If he got any closer he’d have to physically restrain himself from knocking the phone out of the detective’s hand.

“Why not?” Carisi asked, genuine confusion on his face. His thumb hovered over the keypad.

“I’m busy.”

“Come on, you’ve gotta have time for a drink at least. I know you don’t have to work.”

Barba was aware of his face, revealing everything in its open blankness. He had no reply. He let the silence pull out longer, and Carisi’s face took on a few expressions as it stretched on. Not playing along was out of character for Barba, and the detective seemed to struggle with the newfound silence as much as he did.

“Is everything ok?” Carisi asked. Something registered in his eyes as if a string he’d been pulling finally became taut.

“Of course,” Barba swallowed. “As I said, I need to go.”

“Hold on a second,” Carisi called as Barba turned his back. His long strides put him between the counselor and the door before he could grab the doorknob. “What’s going on with you?”

“Excuse me?” False offense. It was too obvious, they both knew it.

“Why are you being like this?”

“Like what, Carisi?” Barba’s voice dripped with boredom, exhaustion. He kicked himself after every word he spoke for its glaring overcompensation.

“I don’t know,” Carisi answered, contemplating. “All...cagey. Weird.”

“Forgive me if I’m less than forthcoming about my vacation details. I’ll make sure to put on a slideshow of pictures for you some other time.”

“Still not answering the question.”

Barba made to push past him, but Carisi held his ground. Rather, the counselor found himself standing quite close to the detective, accentuating their height difference. He’d never felt capable of being physically intimidating, and the man staring down at him from what seemed a mile away didn’t help.

“Hey,” Carisi called. Barba looked up, then away again. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Where Barba could argue and mince words with another lawyer for hours on end, Carisi’s limited vocabulary and inexperience with rhetoric had the disarming effect of occasionally shutting him up. There was nowhere for Barba to go when he couldn’t latch on to semantics or pull apart subtext. It was an odd quality, one that always made him wonder why Carisi would bother with the formalities and ritual of a courtroom when he could circumvent it all with his god-given ability to say whatever was on his mind without a second thought - to ask a direct question and get an answer when no one else would, or could.  

Lying was out. All he could hope now was to manage a controlled confession, instead of entering an interrogation.

“A lot,” Barba answered.

 

 

His first thought was of exposure.

“We can’t stay here,” Barba said, looking out the window of the door to his office. “People will be coming back from lunch soon, and I can’t have someone walking by and seeing us from the hall.”

Carisi looked over his shoulder to the empty corridor. “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” Barba sighed. His mind whirred for safe places he could _be_ that weren’t his apartment. Anywhere but his apartment. “Maybe you could leave first, go to that diner a few blocks down. Sit in the back. I’ll leave twenty minutes after and meet you there.”

“Or we could just, you know, sit on the floor.” Carisi looked as if he were speaking to a child.

“The _floor_?” Barba repeated. Incredulous was putting it lightly.

“Yeah, if we get low and kinda hang toward the wall, no one can see us.”

“You want us to sit on the floor.”

“Helluva lot easier than that whole rigmarole you suggested.”

The challenge on Carisi’s face made it obvious that he’d already won the argument. Barba truly hated the feeling of being bested, and the regret for his decision to confide in the detective already began clenching in his jaw.  

Making his displeasure clear, Barba lowered himself onto the carpet. Carisi plopped down, leaning against the wall between the entryway and the office, legs splayed out like a toddler. The counselor was suddenly very conscious of his legs; he wasn’t sure what to do with them. Fold, cross, extend, tuck under - all felt slightly vulgar. He decided to lean his back against his desk across from Carisi, one leg out and the other bent in. While Barba’s entire body was rigid with discomfort, Carisi looked as if he’d never heard of a chair and wasn’t particularly interested in the concept either.

“So,” Carisi started.

“So,” Barba echoed. He stalled while thinking of ways to tell the story with the least amount of embarrassment. “I guess you could say I haven’t exactly been truthful about where I’ve been, or what I’ve been doing.”

“So you didn’t leave the country?”

“No.” Barba gave a half-hearted chuckle, only to find the detective patiently waiting for him to elaborate. “I’ve been sort of…in hiding.”

“Oh my god,” Carisi said, leaning forward and looking over his shoulder as if he were a little kid about to indulge in the thrill of using a dirty word. “Are you in the _witness protection program?_ ”

“Please,” Barba snipped. “I’d rather face a firing squad of dirty cops than be reborn as Joe Nobody in some plastic suburb. What I’m doing is off the books.”

“No kidding,” Carisi leaned back and crossed his arms, looking fairly wowed.

“And extremely confidential. You cannot tell anyone. Not Benson, not Rollins, not your sisters, not even your dog.”

“I don’t have a dog.”

“Carisi,” the counselor closed his eyes for a moment to gain his composure. “If you breath a word of this to any living soul, I swear to god—”

“I get it, I get it. Mum’s the word. Believe it or not, I’m actually pretty good at keeping secrets.”

“I’m favoring ‘not’, but prove me wrong.”

Carisi rolled his eyes. “Ok, so what, you’re just some secret hermit now? What gives?”

Barba cleared his throat, resisting the urge to tug at his collar. “I’m investigating.”

“Investigating what?”

“The cops who are threatening me.” He willed his voice to sound confident, but the shock on Carisi’s face made it apparent that it didn’t matter.

“By _yourself?_ ”

“Yes,” he affirmed, in spite of Carisi’s eyebrows that continued on a pilgrimage to his hairline. “Trying to, anyway. Mostly failing.”

Rendering the detective speechless was something Barba had done before, but only after marveling at a perfectly punctuated comeback or skillful move in court. The thought that Carisi was sitting there marveling at his stupidity made him squirm.

“I couldn’t sit back anymore,” he said suddenly, hardly recognizing the truthfulness of what poured from his mouth. “I couldn’t think, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. There’s this constant paranoia that I could die any time I show up to work. And if things kept escalating the way they had been, or _have been_ rather, I can’t even walk outside by myself. I don’t want to live with a permanent shadow, and who says my so-called protection wouldn’t be corrupt either?” He took a second to breath and stare at intently at his shoelaces. “I need my life to be mine.”

“Hey, I get it.” Carisi leaned forward, hands grasping his knees. “I’d've probably gone rogue too, and a lot earlier if I was you. I’m not judging.”

Barba scoffed. “Don’t speak too soon.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I spent the first week cowering, mostly, hiding in my apartment and only going outside to not make my detail suspicious. Keeping up appearances while I figured out what the hell I was going to do. Meanwhile the texts and hang ups were getting more frequent.” Barba looked at the detective who sported a sickeningly sympathetic face. “Felipe Heredio—”

“The guy we arrested,” Carisi perked up.

“Yes, well, turns out he was released on bail not twelve hours after that arrest.”

Carisi reacted with his whole body, then seemed to become self-aware, slowly leaning back against the wall that he had shot forward from. “How did you find that out?” He asked in a controlled tone.

“I saw him at a bus stop on my way to Starbucks a couple times that week. He didn’t see me, thankfully.”

“Jesus Christ,” Carisi shook his head, arms fidgeting.

“Anyway, I figured looking into him would be a good place to start.”

“So where do the Cayman Islands come in?”

Barba smirked, biting his lip. “Honestly? I saw a tourism commercial on TV. Booked a one way ticket at 2 AM, packed a bag and made the calls the next morning.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Voices sounded in the hall, both men halting their breath until they faded past.

Carisi lowered his voice when he spoke again. “Did you go to the airport?”

“Mhm. Officers followed me all the way to security. I went through and waited in a bathroom stall until boarding was over.” Barba remembered the smell. How someone knocked repeatedly on the door for a whole minute shouting in a language he didn’t recognize. “Then I went home.”

He didn’t mention the part about riding back on the subway, too afraid to make eye contact with anyone, and attracting attention to himself when his hands shook too much to fit the metro card in the slot.

“No one checked to make sure you made it?” Carisi asked. Barba wondered if the detective’s  shock would eventually fade as he went on, or if it would rise to the point where he would have to start lying to him.

“I found a site online that I used to send an email with an IP address in the Cayman Islands. Haven’t heard from them since.”

“What did you do then?”

“I bought a burner phone for myself and went back to the bus stop where I saw Heredio. I managed to follow him for about a week.”

“Did you find out anything?”

Barba bit the inside of his cheek. “Just that he works on a construction site downtown and has an affinity for chili dogs.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much. He didn’t reach out to me, and I kept getting texts on my main cell while he was at work. I’m fairly confident he’s out of the picture as far as the threats go.”

“When did you stop following him?” Carisi asked.

Barba contemplated making something up to save face, but a part of him almost felt like he deserved the ridicule. There was something cathartic about someone else validating the low things he’d been thinking about himself.

“After I accidentally wandered into BX9 territory one night and got mugged.”

“You got _mugged?_ ” Carisi all but shouted.

“Three guys, two knives. Fortunately I only had my burner on me. Except for the fact that they got angry I didn’t have any money and started beating me. Still have a nasty bruise on my ribs.”

Carisi adopted mild composure, holding back a reaction. “Are you ok?”

“Oh sure. Almost refreshing to actually see some action after months of only hearing about injury to my person.”

“Did you call anyone? Did you get help?”

“No, something a little more terrifying happened when I got back.”

“Christ, what now?” Carisi brought his hand to his temple.

“There was a...” Barba swallowed. “Photograph, taped to my door. It was taken from far away, a few months ago. I have no idea how they got it, where they must have been to even get the angle…”

Barba hoped beyond hope that Carisi wouldn’t press the subject, wouldn’t ask what he was doing in the photo or where he was. The memory of it still made his ears burn. Ever the empath, Carisi seemed to intuit the delicacy of the matter and bit the inside of his lip, looking downward while waiting for Barba to continue.

“When I got inside,” Babra pressed on, “There was a text on my main cell saying ‘how was your trip?’”

“Shit.”

Carisi looked so shaken, Barba had a small urge to reassure him somehow.

“It wasn’t to my burner, so I don’t know if they know I’m back or if they just wanted to have it waiting for me when I did eventually return. I left the photo where it was in case they come checking.”    

“Have they?”

“Not that I noticed. But there is something.” Barba glanced up as Carisi leaned forward. “Every Friday around 7 I get a call and hang up from the same number. I thought I recognized it before, from earlier this year. I have a list of the numbers that called me in a file around here. That’s what I was doing just now when I caught _someone_ being a peeping tom.”

Carisi completely deflected the jab, face painted with disbelief. “This is insane.”

“Try living it.”

“No, really, this is insane. I can’t believe you’re doing this. You. The letter of the law.”

“Everything I’ve done so far has been rather...uncharacteristic.”

“You mean stupid?”

“Unplanned,” Barba corrected. “And yes,” he conceded, “Maybe a bit foolish. But that’s what I have to do to stay ahead of them. Be unpredictable. Be not like myself.” He glanced at the detective who still looked bewildered. “It’s driving me a little crazy, if I’m honest. I’m taking off running with every impulse and only realizing afterward how half-baked it is.” Carisi chewed on his lip, pointedly not making eye contact. “But now I think I’ve finally screwed myself, as thoroughly as possible.”

“Well, maybe not,” Carisi said after a moment.

“Do you have any bright ideas you’d like to illuminate?”

“The tracking the numbers thing, that’s not a bad idea. And you’re right, it’s a major slip up on their part that they’re developing a pattern. It makes sense if they think you’re gone, maybe. Having a stack of harassment waiting for you on your front door.”

“It sure has been fun to sift through.”

“And if I run the number I can probably get you a name or location at least.”

Barba tilted his head, interrupting. “Hold on, run the number? At the station?”

“That’s where the computers are.”

“No.” The counselor’s heartbeat picked up, pattering against his sternum. “No. I don’t want anything getting out, I don’t want anyone to be tipped off.”

“They won’t get tipped off—”

Barba leaned forward. “You have no way of knowing who’s there, who’s watching or listening.”

“Calm down, Counselor, I’m not gonna—”

“I never said you could get involved,” Barba hissed. In lowering his voice, he silenced the detective. “This is my problem. Mine. Not yours, not SVU’s, mine alone.”

“Counselor,” Carisi tried, but had nothing to follow it with.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” Barba spoke, aware of how childish he sounded.

“And what are you gonna do without it?” Carisi fixed the counselor with a sobering look. “You said so yourself, you’re at a dead end. What do you have to lose?”

“My life,” Barba breathed, staring at the carpet.

Carisi attempted to make eye contact, and when he was denied it, moved closer. He scooted until his hip was less than a foot from Barba’s, and reached forward to place a gripping hand on his shoulder. He stared hard at Barba’s face, so much so that the counselor almost entertained looking back.

“I swear to you,” Carisi spoke, “On my grandfather’s grave, god as my witness, I will not let you be killed because of this.”

“Are you sure that’s a promise you can keep?” Barba chanced a look up and immediately regretted it. The earnestness on Carisi’s face made his fingertips twitch.

“Yes,” Carisi answered. There was no hesitation. Only certainty.

Barba wondered if there was any other outcome to this. If when he started talking, there was any possibility that he'd be walking out alone. If he would have actually allowed that.

“Ok.” He emptied the air from his lungs. “Ok. Run the number.”

Carisi smiled and clapped Barba on the arm.

“Alright, now we’re talking.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Right, sorry.”

Barba repressed a smirk. “When can you get it done?”

“I’m off until Wednesday. I can give you a call that night?”

“I’ll text you from my burner. Don’t save the number.”

“Sounds good.”

They exchanged a glance that Barba would describe as conspiratorial, if he thought Carisi was capable of something as secretive as conspiracy.

“...So should I leave first, or?” Carisi coughed.

“Go ahead. I’ll follow down in a half hour or so.”

“Do you want me to walk you to your place?”

“Chivalrous, but conspicuous,” Barba quipped. Carisi blushed, and the counselor almost felt sorry for how easily he was regaining his rhythm. “I’ll manage,” he added, gently and with a mostly genuine smile.

Carisi got up and looked out to the hall from an angle beside the window.

“I’m sorry this is happening to you,” he said, turning back to the counselor.

The statement was disarming; Barba didn’t know how to respond. There was a fine line between sympathy and pity that Carisi walked like a tightrope. Barba watched and waited for him to fall toward the more unfavorable side.

“It is what it is, I suppose,” he said, wishing for Carisi to leave before his mouth ran off into trouble like it always did.

“It’s shitty. And unfair.”

“No good deed,” Barba said, rising from the floor. Brushing off his jeans was a good excuse to avoid continuing the conversation, he thought. After what seemed like too long, he looked up to Carisi’s gaze waiting for him.

Hand on the door, he smiled. “I’ll give you a call, Counselor.”

Barba watched him slip into the hall, heard the door click softly into place. He waited longer than he needed, standing near the wall, inspecting the finish on his desk, before walking out himself. He took the stairs, a more substantial justification for his pulse rising up through his arms, chest, neck and into the space beneath his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey thanks for reading y'all. I recently made a blog for barisi / generally griping about writing this fic - so if you wanna follow for updates or to keep me company in this shipping hell, do so at buhrisi.tumblr.com


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy SVU Wednesday this fic is back from the dead

If he was truly, completely honest, Carisi didn’t know whether it was illegal or not. It could get him fired, sure, but was it actually illegal to run someone’s phone number through the system without direct orders from his lieutenant? He felt embarrassed, fingers itching to flip through the employee handbook that was shoved against the back of the front desk file cabinet. _I know I should know this,_ he thought, as a beating tone murmured between his ear and his cell phone. If it wasn’t illegal, it was at least risky - dangerous even. That, and that alone, was what Carisi told himself caused the electric current running through his limbs. Disobeying orders, not the imminent sound of the voice on the other line, was what made his eyelids itch from the moisture building up on his brow.

Then he picked up.

“Did you run it?” Barba’s voice was low and close, like his mouth was pressed against the receiver. Of course Barba wouldn’t bother with pleasantries, and Carisi’s mind flailed to catch up.

“Yeah,” he sputtered. “Hi.”  

There was a moment where Carisi knew he should say something, follow up on the initial question and move on from this already botched call, but his mind blanked. The counselor had said less than five words and Carisi was already speechless.

“Hi,” Barba echoed back. Carisi could nearly feel the condescension radiating off Barba’s person and through the phone. “Did you run the number?”

“I did. Run the number, yeah.” Carisi stared at a tear in the linoleum, eyes darting down the hallway at someone passing through the squad room. “It’s a payphone about 10 blocks from your apartment.”

“How do you know where I live?”

Again, Carisi was caught disarmed, while Barba held a defensive spear against his throat.

“I looked it up.” Carisi was sure the counselor could hear the words squeeze through the clench in his Adam’s apple. “I was trying to, you know, be a detective. Investigate.”

It wasn’t a lie, but the way Barba asked made Carisi feel like he deserved the accusation. He wanted to know how close these bastards were getting to the counselor. And so what if curiosity got the better of him and he toured google street view for the cafes and shops near his house, wondering which ones Barba might be a regular at. It wasn’t in the purview of the question.     

“Good work, Magnum, what else did you find out?”

Carisi drew in a breath - crisis of humiliation momentarily averted. “Well, there’s a subway stop across the street. I checked security cams, but they erase their footage every three days, so they didn’t have anything.”

“How did you get the footage?”

“I asked a buddy of mine in DOT.”

Carisi knew he was in for it the millisecond after he spoke.

“Are you kidding me?” Barba raised his voice, then became audibly self-aware by hissing, “I specifically asked you not to get anyone involved.”

“Calm down,” Carisi gave a dramatic eye roll to an invisible audience. “I said it was for a different case, don’t worry about it.”

“Need I remind you that my life —”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a dead man walking I get it. Security footage isn’t part of the plan anyway.”

“And what plan would that be?”

Carisi was frankly a little surprised he walked himself into this situation so quickly. He had planned to ease Barba into it, lead him think it was his own idea. But work was busier than Carisi anticipated, and his scheduled two o’clock think-about-how-to-work-this-out was postponed until the words had tumbled out of his mouth.

Carisi bit at his lip before eking out a delayed response. “You’re not gonna like it.”

“Then I won’t do it,” Barba said, flat and fixed.

“C’mon, hear me out, at least.” Exasperation was carrying his voice farther than he liked. There was no way to argue with Barba and keep an even tone. He had to switch gears. “Please?” he asked, voice soft with just a pinch of pleading. “I think I can actually help you.”

Barba paused so long Carisi had to dig his fingernails into his fist to stop himself from breaking the silence and ditching his plan altogether.  

For once, the sound of Barba’s sigh brought him intense relief.

“What’s your plan, Carisi?”

The detective felt himself grinning and was thankful for the isolation. He didn’t need self-consciousness to ruin his glee.

“Stake out,” he said, half expecting a round of applause, and the other half for Barba to hang up the phone.

“A stake out,” the counselor repeated.

“Uh-huh.”

“As in, sitting in an unmarked car drinking coffee with a police scanner in the background, stake out?”

“Yes sir.” Carisi charged on, emboldened by an unknown source. “We go at the scheduled time, see who pulls up to this payphone at 7pm and see if your phone ever lights up.”

“So you want me to put myself directly in the sight line of someone making an active threat against my life, under the safe haven of a squad car, which, if it happens to be a police officer threatening me, he will recognize straight away.”

“I didn’t say you had to come,” Carisi said, baiting him, starting to enjoy it. Barba scoffed audibly on the other end. “I just thought you might be bored sitting around listening to the Met opera on cassette and reading Nietzsche or whatever it is you do with your time.” Carisi only made a guess at how _Nietzsche_ was pronounced, and determined he definitely got it wrong the longer Barba said nothing.

“I’m going,” the counselor grumbled at last.

It was all moving along much easier than he thought it would.

“Great. You wanna meet me at that diner by the precinct?”

“Fine—”

Barba’s assent was interrupted by a perp leaving the interrogation room shouting false claims about his _rights as a free inhabitant of the United States._

“What was that? Where are you?” Barba asked, hurried and urgent.

“Oh nothing,” Carisi answered, craning his neck to make sure they weren’t coming his way. “I’m still at work.”

“You’re having this conversation _at the precinct?”_

Carisi brought a hand to his brow, knowing he thought too soon. Things would never be easy with Barba.

“It would’ve been suspicious if I left the building. I’ve still got two hours left in my shift.”

“You should’ve waited until you got home.”

“Would you really have wanted to wait any longer?”

Carisi was glad to be spared Barba’s glowering – it allowed him far more confidence to knock the counselor back when he was being ridiculous.

“No,” Barba conceded. Carisi was starting to mildly enjoy himself. It was seldom he had the upper hand with the Harvard educated, highbrow, high fashion, highfalutin ADA.

“Right, so, diner. 5:30 on Friday. We can get dinner there too. I’m buying.”

“Well.” It sounded through the phone as if Barba had choked on something, given the garbled cough-huff-answer he gave.

“See you soon, Counselor.”

Carisi hung up, buzzing in his soles with every step back to his desk, floating with the knowledge that he was finally, recklessly in control while the ADA was left scrambling.  

  


* * *

  
  
At 5:35 PM, Carisi started pulling the thread on the rip in the vinyl booth next to his left leg. By 5:48 PM, his fingers were playing with the stuffing inside. When the neon clock behind the diner’s counter hit 6, he was sitting noticeably lower from redistributing the cushioning beneath him.

Getting stood up wasn’t probably all that bad of a thing after all, Carisi thought. He looked ridiculous, struggling for thirty minutes to hit the perfect look between professional and inconspicuous. He only strived to look professional for Barba’s benefit, because dressing as anything else in front of the man seemed inappropriate somehow. He settled on jeans and a t-shirt with a blazer and vans. When he saw his reflection in the glass of the diner’s door upon arriving, he realized immediately that it looked like he was going on a date. Which would only be exacerbated later while him and the ADA sat alone in a parked car. He shoved the implications of the evening away as he stuck another three chili-slathered fries down his throat. 

Although, when not fixating on his likely dismissal by the counselor, the more haunting possibility entered his mind that something could have happened. The last Carisi spoke to him, Barba was scared out of his mind, convinced people were listening in on their conversation from the precinct. What if he was right? What if he’d been intercepted, taken, beaten, killed? Four more fries down the hatch. He knew where the counselor lived; he could just pop by and make sure. But if Barba was there, Carisi might never survive the embarrassment. He pulled up his phone’s GPS, grabbing blindly for another fry.

“I see you’ve started without me.” Barba’s voice sounded beside the table, and Carisi all but jumped out of his seat.

“Christ,” the detective swore, slapping chili-wet fingers over his heart and onto his suit jacket. It didn’t escape the counselor’s attention. “You scared the shit out of me.” He swiped a napkin brusquely against the stain. “What took you so long?”

Barba took his turn looking sheepish. “Just some trouble getting out of the house.”

Carisi would’ve inquired further, but he was distracted by the look of him. He appeared wilted, or like an alternate universe version of himself who worked as a public defender and had never felt joy since. He wore the same hoody he saw him in last, but with jeans that looked even older and thinner.

“You doin’ okay?” Carisi asked, squinting to see if the sunlight was hitting him strangely or if he’d sprouted a patch of gray hair.

“Is my hapless-shlub look working that well?”

He looked more like an alcoholic on his third day of sobriety in Carisi’s opinion, but he sensed this comment would not be well received.

“You want some?” Carisi asked, gesturing to the near-empty basket of brown and yellow mush.

“I’ll pass,” Barba said with a face of poorly masked distaste. “Besides, I’m afraid my tardiness has left us with little time to eat.”

“We can pick up some fast food,” Carisi suggested, battling with bad secondhand embarrassment for the counselor who looked six-days starved.

“I’ll be fine, you already ate.”

“Hey, I said I was buying you dinner, so I’m buying you dinner.” Carisi smiled at the counselor, who chewed on the inside of his cheek.

“That’s kind of you, Carisi,” Barba said, though it looked like it pained him to do so.

“C’mon,” Carisi stood, clapping the counselor on the shoulder. Then, just to amuse himself, he suggested, “I’ll take you to Arby’s. They’ve got a pastrami that ain’t half bad.”

 

* * *

 

Carisi took a long, loud drag from his straw, shaking the ice around at the bottom of the large soda to savor the last drops of sweetness. The ADA sat in the passenger seat, half-eaten sandwich lying abandoned on a wrapper in his lap. Carisi had to restrain himself from laughing earlier when the meat fell out of Barba’s sandwich as he took his first bite. Barba’s childish frown as the process repeated itself over and over almost broke Carisi’s will.

There were fifteen minutes to 7 PM left and counting, but the relative silence in the car made the previous six feel closer to forty. The detective’s hands felt greasy no matter how many times he rubbed his napkin over them. He balled one up and threw it into the wheel well of the passenger side where the take out bag sat. He missed, and the wad gently bumped against Barba’s shoe. Carisi looked up at the counselor, expecting a snarky remark on his aim or general offensiveness, but found him instead staring out the windshield, apparently completely unaware.

“Are you gonna finish that?” Carisi asked, simply for something to say.

Barba kept his gaze steady on the street corner in the distance, payphone standing derelict and empty. “Lost my appetite.”

The quiet, the empty look, the sheer boredom encompassing Carisi was beginning to make him squirm. But the situation was delicate; he couldn’t talk about something stupid and universal like sports, because it might come off insensitive, as well as the fact that the only athletes Barba was interested in were the ones he prosecuted. He had spent enough time with the counselor that he could predict the majority of his responses before he even spoke. Most of the time his brain-to-mouth transmission ran too fast to stop himself walking into inevitable teasing or good-natured bullying from the counselor, but the tense air held his tongue in indecision. Patience was not a strong virtue in the detective, and he decided that as usual, he’d figure it out as he went along.

“So,” Carisi cleared his throat, looking sideways at the counselor. Barba had moved a hand up to cradle his face as his arm rested on the door, and returned the look, with an added share of wariness.

“So?” Barba parroted when Carisi offered nothing more.

Thinking, Carisi thought, was something he ought to put more stock into. It might save him in moments like this when his stomach felt like hot jello because he completely underestimated its value.

“So…” Carisi drawled again, racking his brain for conversation topics that didn’t include death, policemen of any kind, or an inquiry into the origin story of the only pair of sneakers Carisi knew Barba to own.

A look of recognition reached Barba’s face, and he distinctly repressed an eye roll.

“Really, Carisi, we don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?” Carisi asked, genuinely thrown and rapidly praying he wasn’t calling off the evening.

Barba released one of his trademark sighs, raising an eyebrow and drawling in tired singsong to the detective. “We’re trapped in a confined space so that opens the door to getting to know each other on a deeper level. A Breakfast Club kind of thing, if you will.”

“You’ve seen the Breakfast Club?” Carisi smirked.

“If we could concentrate on catching the man who’s threatening my life, that would be fantastic.”

“I bet you were totally an Anthony Michael Hall kinda kid in high school.” Carisi turned back to the street, sucking loudly around a smile through his straw. “All obsessed about your grades, having a nervous break down about a bad project.”

“No need for a nervous breakdown when you’ve got a 4.2 GPA.”

The counselor and the detective turned to look at each other simultaneously, Carisi biting on his straw, and Barba biting back a smile.

“Fair enough.”

The temperature in the car seemed to warm, Barba looking slightly less morose and Carisi feeling all the more confident to perk him up out of his slump.

“So…” he started again.

“Really?” Barba turned, with far less irritation than he tried to convey. “You’re gonna do it anyway? Fine.” He sighed, gesturing with a flick of his hand toward the detective. “Ask away, Carisi, what is it you’re so eager to know?”

“What do you…” Carisi didn’t know what he was going to say when suddenly and thankfully, the obvious came to mind. “Do?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You know, like, everyday.”

It wasn’t something Carisi even knew he wanted to know until he asked. The possibilities swimming in the atmosphere before Barba responded were swarming the detective’s imagination.

“Well, Carisi,” Barba said with a modicum of boredom, “I wake up, eat, contemplate my imminent death for eight hours or so, then I go to sleep.”

“C’mon, seriously,” Carisi prodded, giving the counselor a light backhanded tap on his arm. The counselor gave him a withering look and turned his gaze back to the windshield. “You’re only making me more curious by not telling me.”

Barba sent a sideways glance toward the detective and muttered, “I investigate.”

“All day? In your apartment?” Carisi gave the counselor an opportunity to respond, and when he didn’t, said in a goading tone, “I’m not buying it.”

Carisi took another drag through his straw, testing how just how loud and awkward he could make it.

“I read, sometimes,” Barba announced at last, and Carisi fell into silence. Barba make furtive eye contact with the detective’s earnestness before pushing on. “When I’m feeling especially masochistic, I’ll look online at articles about cases that the DA is working.”

“Yikes,” Carisi answered. “Have you heard about any of Emory’s cases?”

“Since you brought her up last time, yes.” Barba clucked his tongue. “It’s appalling.”

“I said so, didn’t I?” Carisi all but shouted.

“Hearing about that Rubiano case I had to stop myself from rushing the courtroom and literally pushing her aside.”

Carisi barked a short laugh. “I would’ve liked to see that.”

“You don’t think I could do it?” Barba raised a brow.

“Oh I know you could do it, I’d just like to see how you’d get the jury to ignore your human step stool lying on the floor.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Carisi,” Barba said, deadpan, making Carisi pause mid-chuckle. “I’d have her put me up on her shoulders.”

Carisi laughed loud, and hard, slapping the steering wheel reflexively. He was almost distracted enough to miss Barba laughing too, under his breath and biting on the inside of his cheek.

Carisi noticed Barba had gone silent a little late, and managed to quiet himself with a few deep breaths. The counselor’s eyes were trained straight ahead, something stoic set into his face.

“Don’t worry Counselor, you’ll be back in there soon enough.” Carisi gave him another jovial thump on this forearm, but the counselor didn’t stir. The detective’s eyes fell to Barba’s right hand, gripping the armrest so tight the center of his fingernails held a rosy dollop of color amid the white pallor the rest of his fingers had taken.

The counselor muttered something Carisi didn’t catch, a pinching bitter taste stinging the hinges of the detective’s jaw.

“What,” he asked, a note too hopeful despite alarm bells going off in his head.

“Someone’s there,” Barba said, not much louder than the first time. Carisi whipped his head first to the clock on the dashboard, reading 6:57, then to the figure at the payphone.

The man fit the description of about every John Doe in the city. White, mid to late 30s, 5’10”, average build. Wore a baseball cap and a jacket with jeans and sneakers. No labels, logos, or identifying marks of any kind. On top of that, he had the kind of face that you forget the instant you look away. His eyes were small and blurred into his flesh that even if you were face to face, you’d have trouble saying what color they were. 

He didn’t act like he was up to anything. He didn’t look around or scan the faces near him, try to conceal his own face in any way. The man leaned one hand against the metal hood of the payphone, digging his other hand into his jeans pocket. After what a short while, he pulled out a fist, unfurling it to reveal a clump of silver and copper coins. He took his time counting them, inching each piece from one end of his palm to the other with his thumb.

Carisi heard the sound of one long inhaled breath beside him, and turned his attention back to the counselor. His expression was muddled with blank intensity, an unwelcome break from the comforting blasé that the detective had become accustomed to.

“It might not be him,” Carisi said, stomach clenching as the bitterness in his mouth bloomed.

“It might not,” Barba answered, voice cooler than Carisi anticipated. He looked back at the man, then to the clock. 6:58.

“Does this guy look familiar?” Carisi asked.

Barba shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

Having forgotten his face already, Carisi looked back at the man. “Are you sure?”

“Certain.”

Barba’s eyes were fixed on the man, and Carisi’s doubt melted behind the anxiety of the immediate unknown.

6:59

They sat in silence as the remaining minute passed, no noticeable change between them as the man picked up the receiver, pressed it to his ear, and dialed a number from a slip of paper he pulled from his jacket pocket.

It took three more seconds for Barba’s phone to start ringing.  
  
The excruciating part was not picking up, letting the phone buzz and buzz until it went to voicemail. Barba didn’t look at it once, kept his stare on the man at the payphone. Carisi as a result didn’t know where to look, eyes darting between the man, Barba beside him, and the blinking light of the phone as if looking longer would provide more information.

For one sickening second Carisi thought the man would leave a message, but he didn’t. When the phone went black the man on the street set the phone back on its hook and stepped away. He pulled a small cellphone, the size of his palm, out of his jacket pocket and put it to his ear. He rocked back on his heels, looking up at the windows of buildings around him as he exchanged what looked like a short, direct series of sentences to the person on the other line.

Carisi took a deep breath and turned to the counselor sitting rigid in the passenger seat.

“Well, I guess that’s our guy.” He watched the man nod to no one, and start making his way down the sidewalk. “How’s about we—”

“Follow him,” Barba said, low enough that Carisi wasn’t sure he heard right.

“You sure? We can take it slow this time and—”

“You dragged me out here to find out who he is, and we know nothing as of now. Follow him.” Barba gave the detective a single look as emphasis, speaking more to the desperation of his plea than he could say. Carisi closed his mouth that had been ready to argue and put the car into drive. 

They crept along the road, slow and distant enough to avoid suspicion. The man turned a corner, and Carisi waited at a stop sign far longer than necessary until the driver in the car behind them hollered out their window to hurry up. He rounded the corner at a snail’s pace, the man tottering along like he had all the time in the world.

Carisi looked in apprehension at Barba’s face so many times he was sure he’d get an irritated and snarky jab from the counselor, but he didn’t seem to notice. Chasing around bad guys was all in a day’s work for the detective; he wasn’t so moved by the turn of events. What chilled him was the reaction, or lack thereof, from Barba. The frozen stance, hand clutching the armrest, body tilted right and just past comfortable, all spoke less to stolidity and more to concealed terror. The bubbly amusement of seeing the counselor out of his comfort zone had congealed into a thick paste that slid down the walls of Carisi’s stomach. None of this was fun anymore.

They didn’t have to drive much longer before the man ducked into a park, sitting down at a bench near the sidewalk. Carisi parked half the block down, far enough to not be seen, close enough to just make out defining features on the figures romping around on the grass behind the bench.

In a self-conscious act of redundancy, Carisi turned to the counselor once more. There was nothing there to read. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, swapping between several banal niceties and stopping before spitting them out. At last he mentally slapped himself, deciding to take a cue from the counselor and focus on the task at hand. Watch.

For several minutes, there wasn’t much to see, other than a vague white man texting on a park bench, arm slung over the back with a foot resting across his knee. His casualness made Carisi’s blood boil, while the detective’s foot began a muffled tapping against the floor mat.

And then there was someone else. Also white, but tall, and older. This new man had on a suit jacket, polished brown leather shoes and a steel gray tie – not unlike someone Carisi might work with. There was something about him that screamed the force to the detective, though he was reluctant to voice it.

“I know him,” Barba announced into the silence, startling Carisi into nearly flinching at the sound.

Carisi looked back at the man in the suit, trying to place him. “You do?” he asked.

Barba nodded, bottom lip clamped down by worrying teeth. “He’s a lieutenant for Brooklyn homicide.”

“Shit,” Carisi said. The men appeared to be chatting, the man from the payphone now chewing obnoxiously on a large wad of gum. “Does he have something against you? Did you piss him off while you were there?”

Barba hissed a long exhale through his nose. “Not that I know of. We hardly spoke, I dealt mainly with the captain.”

They watched the lieutenant clap the other man on the shoulder, rising as something was deftly exchanged between their hands. Nothing more than nods to one another before the lieutenant was gone, and the other man stalked off, head bowed to his phone and tapping away.

“Christ.” It was all Carisi could think to say. He knew all along, as Barba surely did too, that it probably went deeper than the DOC. Though unsavory, Carisi had braced himself for the possibility that Barba’s paranoia toward Manhattan police was founded in truth. This though, was far more chilling. It wasn’t just that they were walking on ice, but the depths beneath them were dark, deadly, and unfathomable.

“It makes me sick,” Carisi said, brow clenched with tension and anger. “Just sick. Cops are supposed to- to be—”

“I want to go home,” Barba cut in. Carisi looked at the counselor who, as throughout much of the evening, refused his gaze. He waited a moment longer, another _are you sure?_ hanging in the air.

“I want to go home.” Barba moved for the first time in what seemed like an hour, settling his body neatly into the seat. He laid his hands by his sides, and straightened out his legs.

“Okay.” Carisi nodded, hand faltering for a fraction of a second where he decided against giving the counselor a reassuring pat on his leg, and instead reached for the gear stick. One definitive thing he had learned about Barba since knowing him was that any and all displays of camaraderie and affection only elicited negativity. That didn’t mean Carisi didn’t want to. If he didn’t know better, or maybe cared a little less, Carisi would’ve used everything in his arsenal to show him how sorry he felt.

 

* * *

 

Carisi couldn’t help but notice how small he looked. When the counselor stepped out of the car, his hood pulled up over his head and sleeves covering all but his fingertips, Carisi was reminded of people he’d seen in the squad room. On the right side of the glass, eyes dancing over similar-looking men, or sat on semi-comfortable couches, clutching coffee in Styrofoam cups with the same dazed look Barba had in his eyes. During the ride over it didn’t escape Carisi’s attention that the arms Barba had placed so neatly at his sides slowly ended up in his lap, and finally resting tight against his abdomen, laced across one another. He didn’t need to ask if Barba wanted him to walk him up.

The building was even more unassuming than google street view had made it look – clouds had begun to cover the sky and the dull gray matched the stone façade of the building to a T. They avoided the main entrance, rounding the corner to a side street where a cascading fire escape hung against the building’s back. A rickety old table whose finishing had died a sad death was placed beneath the first landing. The counselor hopped on top of it with the ease of someone who’d done it their whole life.

“This is how you get into your building?”

“Can’t exactly waltz past the doorman, can I?”

Barba reached up to the rusted ladder and yanked it down, clambering up onto the first landing. He waited at the top, raising an eyebrow at Carisi with expectancy.

Not one to shy away from a challenge, as feeble a challenge as scaling an eight-foot distance might be, Carisi zoomed up the wobbling table and creaking ladder as fast as he possibly could. On the last rung, Carisi’s shoe lost traction and he slipped for a heart-stopping moment. The mild smirk on Barba’s face was worth whatever embarrassing, terrified expression he must have made.

Barba pulled up the ladder and jimmied open a window leading to a hallway on the first floor. It was positioned away from the units, near the inner stairwell. The opening was wide enough for them both to fit through, and they ducked their heads to enter the hall. Barba placed a finger over his lips and turned to the detective, who stopped breathing, or grunting, or whatever noise he had likely been making without his own knowledge. Barba listened at the door to the stairwell before gingerly creaking it open, and waving Carisi inside.

“I’m on the sixth floor,” Barba said in a voice just above a whisper.

“Not bad,” Carisi answered, after considering that the building only had seven floors in total.

They crept up the steps, carpeted in a dark forest green with patches of worn and matted gray where people had trod over the years.

“Are there no cameras in here?” Carisi asked, scanning the vaulted walls leading upward.

“They don’t turn them on. It seems the building manager thought installing them was secure enough. Like a placebo effect, but for theft.”

“Ain’t that nice,” Carisi tutted. “Bet you pay good money for this place too.”

“I’ve lived worse.”

There was humor there, even if the counselor didn’t show it on his face, and a trickle of something airy rose up through Carisi’s insides.

They reached the landing for the sixth floor, and Barba paused again, leaning his ear against the door jam.

“Seriously?” Carisi asked, ogling the absurdity before him. “You just listen for someone coming and hope for the best?”

“When you think of something better, please feel free to share.”

“I’m just saying, it seems a little risky—” Carisi was promptly shushed, and with a concealed eye roll, waited in silence.

“Okay,” Barba straightened up. “It sounds clear.” He noiselessly pushed open the door, and peaked his head into the hall before the rest of his body followed.

In a little less than a jog, the two hurried down the hall. Barba’s unit was at the very end on the right, indistinguishable from the other units except for its uniquely barren appearance. Others put doormats, wreaths, and other homey, characterizing things to identify themselves, while Barba’s doorway remained distinctly without. Until one got close.

Maybe because it was flat, and taped directly to the door, the angle stopped Carisi from seeing it earlier. The one decoration to the counselor’s unit was affixed haphazardly upon the door, no eye for a centered or level placement. When the two stepped in front of Barba’s door, as he fumbled slowly and silently for his keys, Carisi was face to face with an 8’x10’ black and white photograph stuck on at eye level.

At first, Carisi wasn’t sure what he was looking at. There was something large and black cutting across the bottom left of the frame, obscuring the total view of the image. After a second or two of placing it all, the scene became plain. Barba, in shorts and a light shirt, whose buttons opened far enough down to see there was no undershirt beneath, stood on what looked like the deck of a boat, laughing. There was a drink in his hand, and someone stood beside him. Their back was to the camera, but the image of man’s hand placed firm on Barba’s hip was clear in the sunlight.

Carisi swallowed thickly, eyes darting to the back of Barba’s head that had finally stuck the key into the knob and was turning with both hands. He caught a glimpse of the corner of Barba’s eye, pointedly refusing to see Carisi’s face, or more likely, his reaction.

They stepped into the apartment, Barba slipping behind Carisi to shut the door without a sound. Once it was closed, Barba sighed, leaning his weight against the door. Carisi took the moment to revel in the sight of a place he thought he’d never see, and briefly wondered if anyone else he knew ever had.

It was lovely. Simple, elegant, everything Carisi would have expected from Barba’s apartment. Framed art on the walls, old records leaning against a turntable amongst shelves and shelves of books. Frankly Carisi was a little impressed with himself for pegging the counselor so perfectly. The pride was short-lived however when he turned and saw the look on Barba’s face, the sheer hopelessness.

He wanted to say a hundred different things to him, _it’s gonna be ok, they won’t hurt you, we’ll find them, don’t be scared_ – but none of them were completely true, and Carisi had the feeling that even if he did say one of them out loud, the counselor might not even hear. Despite his fervent request to go home, Barba looked somehow worse for having gone inside. Hiding didn’t suit him, but what more could he do to fight? The color was drained from his face, his mouth set small and tired. It was hard to imagine him now ever looking like he did in that photo – careless, happy. The implications of the scene somehow seemed pointless, irrelevant, though it was clear that their significance weighed in the air between the two of them, Barba’s shame rising like steam off his hunched shoulders.

“So,” Carisi said.

“So,” Barba answered, pushing himself off the door and moving over toward the far window that faced the street. He placed a hand on the couch beside him, like he couldn’t quite support himself after the effort of moving a few feet.

“This lieutenant,” Carisi cleared his throat, gauging Barba’s reaction. He stiffened, as if bracing himself for the conversation. “Is there any reason, I mean anything, any reason at all why he might be targeting you?”

“I don’t know.” Barba’s eyes slipped closed for just a moment before staring back out to the empty gray skyline. “I really don’t. I can hardly remember any of our conversations, what cases we even worked on together…” He trailed off, and Carisi shifted from one foot to another, looking at his hands.

“If I’m being honest with myself, everyone I’ve ever worked with has a reason to put a hit out on me.” Barba cracked a wry smirk, eyes working slowly over to Carisi. “I’m sure you have plenty of grievances.”

“Water under the bridge, Counselor.” Carisi answered, tamping down the buzzing feeling cropping up under his diaphragm.

Barba’s eyes turned downward, then back out to the window. Carisi tried to see what he was looking at, but only saw the clouded sky, sun fading behind the veil into a humid, lazy nightfall.

“I can stay, if you want,” Carisi said before he lost courage.

A moment passed where Barba didn’t respond, until they spoke at the same time.

“Really, it’s no big deal.”

“No.”

They paused again, processing what the other had said.

“No,” Barba said, something cagey and furtive in his eyes. “I’ll be fine. I should get some rest.”

“Yeah, of course,” Carisi answered all too fast. “Rest, take the day off.” Barba gave him a sharp look. “From investigating, I mean.” Carisi nearly choked on his own spit. “You can figure it out after the weekend. Take some time to relax, think on it a little. Don’t drive yourself crazy up here, alright?”

“I’ll do my best,” Barba said, pushing off the couch, inching his way toward Carisi and the door.

When he was about to pass him, Carisi piped up, “How about I come over tomorrow night? Maybe run through some theories, talk it out a little?”

Barba’s expression was mixed, though surprised seemed like the predominant emotion. “Sure,” he said after a beat. “Text me when you’re on your way.”

“Will do,” Carisi said.

They were standing too close for these kinds of pleasantries, heads craned to the side to face each other. Barba was the first to turn away and approach the door. There was the awkward formality of looking out the peephole, Barba pressing himself against the door to get the right angles. He listened for thirty seconds, Carisi close enough to his back to feel his body heat radiating off him. He stepped back just in time for Barba to move away, deeming the coast clear and opening the door.

He couldn’t make noise let alone say a goodbye once the door was open to the hall. Carisi exited onto the carpet, soft pitter-patter of his steps consuming his thoughts until he reached the stairwell.

He knew it was foolish to look back. The door would be closed, Barba would be inside, locked in his apartment and his paranoia, justified or not. No looking back, no parting glance could convey his sympathy or carry his comfort to the counselor when the seal was shut tight. But Carisi wanted to, and so he did it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, written for and dedicated to my girl.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know it's been like 5 months but hey if the show's not gonna give us any Barisi I figure I might as well step in...
> 
> Warning: gay and racial slurs used

He felt low.

The set of his jaw was so stiff it was painful, tamping down the trembling that threatened to migrate to his hands. Hot fog welled in his eyes and he wondered if maybe he actually would cry, though he hadn’t done it since he was a child. His father’s voice – _weak, pathetic_ – followed every emotional outburst he experienced before the age of 12, and like cruel spite he never seemed able to stop crying once his father noticed. It ended when he got older, refusing to fulfill his father’s accusations. He didn’t cry when his father left them, or when he heard that the old man died alone outside a bar from ‘hard living.’ He was pressed to come up with any emotion at all for him at the end, and vaguely in the corner of his mind, he had the sense that his inability to mourn would’ve actually pleased his father. Shutting him up and shutting him down. Barba wondered if it was weaker to bear sadness upfront or to hide it forever away, fooling himself like a child unfamiliar with object permanence.

His cheeks were burning hot, the key sign of a shame he was all too familiar with. He turned from the door, leaning against his sofa again. He dug his fingers into the throw blanket lying over the arm, burrowing a hole through the soft knit with his thumb. _I’m not ashamed_ , his own voice echoed in his head once, twice, a third time, each sounding more plastic and like someone else than the last. He was who he was - a lesson Barba learned and relearned every year at school, every time he moved, every time he got a promotion or met someone new. He was accustomed to being disliked, well versed in reading people’s first impressions of him and how they morphed over longer exposure. Most kept their shallow assumptions and never looked closer. _Difficult, arrogant, spic, faggot_ – he’d heard it all. He had no shame for those who hated him. It was the ones he liked, who had somehow dug deep enough to maybe like him, who had full access to the well of his shame. Those who, when exposed to truer extents of himself, made the well feel more like a frothing spring.

While the sun was busy setting, Barba found himself with nothing to do. He made tea, turned on his TV and turned it off again. He opened his laptop to an old case file he had been reviewing earlier and felt sick at the sight of the NYPD seal on a police report. He put on a record and went into his bedroom to organize his suit jackets where he could barely hear the music. He abandoned the project halfway through the gray section. He allowed himself to think about the Brooklyn lieutenant every three minutes or so, between running the tap as quietly as possible to clean first the spoons, then the forks, then the bowls piled on one side of the sink. He knew there were no illuminating memories to find. If he had offended the lieutenant at some point in the past, it was too long ago to remember it. The most he remembered of the man were terse nods and questions redirected to the detectives who ‘know more about it’ than he ever did.

The sheer _lack of_ was what frightened Barba – more than someone he’d intentionally crossed or put in a prison cell for life. He could make sense of that.  It was simple logic. But perhaps, he scolded himself, he was being naïve. There was nothing more logical than the basic human trait of loyalty and protecting one’s own. He understood clan mentality, the rules of sticking by your blood no matter what. He knew what it was to break from it. A man with a shield wasn’t always a hero. Probably more than anything else, the Brooklyn lieutenant swore not to be a traitor. At least within SVU, Barba wasn’t alone in turning against colleagues of the justice system.

Fatigued by his own fear and paranoia, Barba attempted to sleep at his childhood bedtime. It took less than ten minutes for his silken sheets to break him into a sweat. He was faced with the choice of fumbling in the dark back to his living room to lower the thermostat, or lie above the covers, body vulnerable to the empty room. He opted for shutting his eyes tighter, and silently struggling to remember the Spanish his grandmother murmured each time she recited the rosary.

 

* * *

 

The following day dripped on like honey from a spoon. After a splash of anxiety washed over his head – tensing pain in his shoulders as his lungs worked an unnecessary exercise – it would take a few hours before the panic built enough again to land on him all at once. As a calming tactic, he listed out the things he was afraid of in mental bullet notes.

  * Death (general)
  * Being murdered
  * Being fired
  * Other



For each category there were more notes, breaking down exactly what about them he was afraid of, and then more sub notes for each fear on how it was either foolish or surmountable. The ‘other’ category, however, was troubling. Whenever he tried to focus on it, he was reminded of the fact that his apartment needed tidying, and would subsequently spend forty minutes with a toothbrush on tile grout.

Detective Carisi’s imminent, or not so imminent arrival (depending on how many hours away from nightfall one considered imminent), nagged at the counselor. He prepared all his notes, every sad excuse for evidence he had compiled over his weeks underground paper-clipped and highlighted for reference. None of it amounted to much of anything other than dead ends and, if things kept going like they were, a dead ADA.

In the idle hours of the afternoon, he suddenly wished he had a pet to fuss over, to blame for his anxious state and pat aggressively while scolding it for being so messy. He even went to the extent of going to the ASPCA website, scrolling through the list of homeless creatures, whose eyes looked pleading out to the camera. He closed the window fairly quickly after realizing that he felt sorry for the animals, but not more than he felt distaste at the idea of sharing space with something needy, and realizing what kind of person that made him.

The sun set outside Barba’s apartment to the sound of classical music and silent self-loathing. He buried his head in Tolstoy, old Russian literature being the only thing both distracting and flagellating enough for his mind to stand. When his phone buzzed, he nearly fumbled the book out of his hands.

8:13 PM  
_Heading over. Want me to pick up anything?_

The familiarity startled Barba. Was this how Carisi texted outside of a work context? They hadn’t had enough text exchanges for the counselor to remember his particular cadences. He assumed the detective would use more abbreviation, replace you’s with a single letter and spell ‘to’ numerically. But perhaps he was exaggerating the age difference between them – Carisi had a way of making him feel particularly old.

_All fine here. Already ate._

He hadn’t eaten, but Barba’s appetite was as nonexistent as someone who’d eaten a three-course meal. He tossed the phone aside, all too eager to look away from the screen. It buzzed again almost immediately.

8:15 PM  
_Sounds good. Be there in 10!_

The counselor sighed through his nose and locked his phone. He placed it carefully on his coffee table and walked into the kitchen. He was disappointed at its sparkling perfection. What was he supposed to do with himself for ten whole minutes of awkward agony? There wasn’t enough time begin another cleaning project, but too much time to simply use the bathroom or pour himself a glass of water. He decided to compound several actions - use the bathroom, pour a glass of water, comb and muss his hair in front of the bathroom mirror, swap his worn and stained white t-shirt with a casual button-up (how had he forgotten that?), finish his water and pour another glass, muss his hair again, and pull on sensible black socks. He realized after completing everything how absurd and anal it was to make a list in the first place. And it was a faulty list too, seeing as it took 20 minutes to complete and Barba had barely pulled on his second sock before his phone buzzed, announcing Carisi’s arrival.

The cloak and dagger routine of checking the hallway before ushering Carisi over from the stairwell was about as awkward as the first time. He noticed the detective keep his eyes pointedly averted from the photograph on the door when crossing the threshold. The counselor closed the door behind them and turned to see Carisi holding up a white plastic bag in the air.

“I know you said you weren’t hungry, but I got take out.”

The detective was wearing high tops, jeans and a faded red cotton Coke t-shirt - the smile was across Barba’s face before he could stop himself.

“I got us each a piece of tiramisu too, just- just in case,” Carisi bumbled on when he received no verbal response.

With what little self-control he had left amid his wrecked nerves, Barba willed his feet to move forward and his diaphragm to unclench enough to speak. “I’ll get us plates.”

 

*

 

They ate at the dining table, one half completely covered by neat stacks of paperwork and folders for the evening’s main event. Barba was half worried the detective would reach for one of the sheets with his garlic bread-greased fingers during the meal, but to his surprise Carisi seemed altogether indifferent to the information set before him. If he didn’t know the reason for his visit, Barba would’ve thought he had come over for something more akin to drinking beers and watching the game rather than cracking an NYPD conspiracy.

There was no drinking to be done that night, although Barba so very much wished he wasn’t sober for the meal. Throughout the past weeks his mind often tempted him with the allure of a stiff drink to help ease his worries, but the panic that quickly arrived when thinking about having to handle a possible assassin whilst drunk kept him far from any bottle. He thought he could maybe bring out one of his vintage wines, to impress the detective at the very least, but then realized that the prestige would perhaps be wasted on someone like Carisi. Barba didn’t have much time to scold himself for being elitist before Carisi had finished his pasta marinara and was up gawking at the items displayed around the counselor’s apartment.

“The Met opera! Did I call it or what?” Carisi stood in front of the record player, flicking through his collection of vinyl.

“No Springsteen, I’m afraid,” Barba called from his seat at the table before sliding back and making his way toward the detective.

“I’m more of a Bon Jovi guy myself,” Carisi replied, inspecting an old jazz record that in truth Barba hadn’t ever listened to.

As the counselor stopped beside him, Carisi set in motion again, walking the perimeter and stopping every few feet to make comments on his find. He’d ask questions or rib the counselor for his “obnoxious intellectualism” as Carisi put it. (“Honestly, Barba, we both passed the bar but you don’t see me shoving a full translation of Hammurabi’s code to the front of my book case.”) Differing from the norm, he had few comebacks or verbal responses of any kind to Carisi’s commentary other than mild laughter. His mind was generally set to standard responses of dismissiveness - say the quickest and sharpest thing to get the other person to go away - but he found, much to his surprise, that he didn’t want to dismiss, or discourage or dishearten. For the first time in over 48 hours, Barba breathed with full lung capacity. For the first time in several weeks, he forgot he might die.

On the wall adjacent to Barba’s bedroom, Carisi stopped in front of a large framed poster in black and white with a grinning man’s face and the cursive word _Cabaret_ in lights above.

“Musical theater?” the detective prompted. Barba stood beside him, looking at the frame and their reflections in it for a moment before speaking.

“When I was twelve, my father took me to see a production of it on Broadway. My class had taken a field trip to a community theater’s production of _Oliver_ and I thought it was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.”

Carisi chuckled, earning him a smile and glance out of the counselor’s introspection.

“I did, honestly. I begged my mother for months to take me to see something, anything, which she saw as an opportunity to get my father to spend time with me. Lord knows what she had to do or say to him to get him to agree, but eventually, he did. The seats weren’t bad either. Soon as the house lights went down and the curtain went up, I remember thinking to myself, deciding right then and there it was the best night of my life.”

Barba felt the eyes on him, stared hard at the glass and continued.

“Not twenty minutes in my father starts yelling about what filth we were watching. He wrenched me out of my seat – and oh, I fought him, – but I didn’t make a sound. I let him drag me out of theater and into the street, him cursing all the way home about how disgusting it was, how disgusting me and my mother were. She didn’t say anything when we got home. I didn’t have my own room; I slept on the couch in the living room and cried out there while she sat in the kitchen all night.”

The detective’s head turned down, pointing a grimace at his shoes. Barba took his eyes from the glass to deliver his smug smirk directly at the man beside him.

“I’ve seen seven productions of it now, on the West End and in Chicago too.”

Carisi nodded and huffed a breathy laugh through his nose. After a pause and a quick glance at his sneakers, he replied. “When I was ten I asked my dad if I could join softball like my sisters. He told me to ‘quit saying faggy shit’ and sent me to my room. Signed me up for hockey the next season.”

The two shared a look, Barba’s chest filling with a warmth like understanding, or camaraderie, and something else that his mind skipped on and over.

“Fathers,” Barba started with a wry smirk. “Can’t live with them…”

“Hell, can’t even live in the same borough as ‘em,” Carisi added.

 

*

 

After laughing at Barba’s thorough collection of Aaron Sorkin’s complete works _–_ _Be honest, how many times have you quoted The West Wing without anyone knowing just to sound witty? –_ they made their way back to the kitchen table. Despite looking forward to brainstorming with someone for the past month, Barba felt markedly reluctant to dive into his findings. He was embarrassed at how little he had been able to figure out, and the last hour was the least anxious he had felt in longer than he could remember. The least lonely, without question. In the past weeks he became acutely aware how much social every day interaction he took for granted. Saying good morning to his secretary, thanking the barista at Starbucks, prepping for trial with the SVU and even arguing in court – it all added toward a form of human contact that encompassed the majority of his daily socialization. To an extent, his whole adult life had been spent by himself. There were large swaths of time where he was his only real friend, the only person he could trust with his thoughts and opinions – truncated by nights spent beside someone he’d be sickened with in the morning. But he’d hardly spent much time in actual solitude. The last weeks had been a test of his will and his long-held belief that he was truly self-reliant. Carisi pulled out his chair for him, and the counselor briefly thought he ought to reevaluate his stance on self-reliance altogether.

“Alright, let’s see what you got, Counselor.”

“Don’t expect much,” Barba sighed as the two sat.

“Oh come on, there’s tons of stuff here.” Carisi gestured to the stacks and files on the table.

Roses of heat bloomed on Barba’s cheeks and neck as he took a breath to present the fruit of his efforts. For all his toiling in paranoia, he feared he had come short of anything close to a breakthrough.

“Well, as you might know,” Barba started, “It’s shockingly hard to get information or evidence on anyone without a warrant.”

“Ha!” Carisi barked, and Barba looked up at the detective’s outburst. “Why don’t you remember that the next time you ask us to ‘get you more evidence’ in the middle of a trial.”

“Duly noted,” Barba quirked a brow. “In any case, there’s only one person whose information I could readily get my hands on related to any of this.”

“Yourself.”

Barba reached for a file and opened it in front of them, revealing a stack of colorful highlighted dates and phone numbers.

“I pulled my own phone records from the last year, making sure every call was accounted for. I needed to be sure of the exact date that the suspicious behavior started.”

“That’s smart.”

“I’m flattered.”

Carisi rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. So when did it start?”

“The earliest number that wasn’t a personal acquaintance or sales call occurred on October 15th, highlighted here in red.”

“Ok, what happened that day?”

“It was three days after those officers were indicted for the shooting of Terrence Reynolds.”

Carisi ran a hand over his face, leaning back into his chair. “When was the next call?”

“Twenty minutes later.”

“Christ, do you remember this?”

“Two unanswered calls from blocked numbers nearly a year ago? No, I don’t remember,” Barba sniped. Carisi raised an eyebrow, and Barba cowered from his retort. “I didn’t know anything was happening, I probably thought it was a wrong number.”

“Let me see this.” Carisi grabbed for the file, flicking through the pages and pages of calls. The red highlights were sparse at first, only one or two per page, increasing to five, to six, to ten in the next month, until he reached a page filled entirely with red save for one pure white line. Carisi stopped his hand, staring.

“You didn’t tell me it was this bad,” he said just above a whisper, marveling at the file.

“It’s nothing personal. I didn’t tell anyone.” Barba looked up, forcing something of a smile onto his face.

Just as Carisi made to say something, Barba pulled another stack of files toward them.

“This is everything I could pull on the officers involved in the shooting. Mostly from the public record plus the things I got from my office. Has the dates they were released on bail, et cetera.”

Carisi leafed through the stacks, small as they were, flicking faster when photos of the officers’ faces surfaced.

“I marked on the call log the dates they got out, and the dates they were sent away.”

Barba flipped to the former page, a string of red highlights following, and then to the latter, bleeding red.

“Well that’s just great,” Carisi said.

“A link that obvious is pretty fortunate, I thought.” The slightest morsel of concrete evidence had sated the counselor’s anxiety for hours after the discovery, starving in the proverbial dark for so long.

“What we need now is a link between those guys and the Brooklyn lieu.”

“What a find that would be,” Barba sighed.

The detective paused, tapping his finger against the tabletop. Barba had never met someone who thought so visibly. Carisi worried his brow, eye chasing something invisible across his hands. Then he pulled his phone from his pocket, holding it in front of his face and typing.

“What are you doing,” the counselor asked, a flash of jealousy and embarrassment at the thought that perhaps he had bored the detective enough to start texting someone else.

“I’m googling this guy,” Carisi answered, scrolling with his thumb. Barba sighed reflexively.

“Seriously?” Barba huffed a little louder when the detective ignored him. “You think I haven’t already done that? I’ve got a file on him right here.” He cast a glance at the file, not more than a pitiful three pages high.     

“I wanna take a look for myself, alright?” Carisi looked away from his phone for a moment to throw the counselor a look.

Barba, muttering something along the lines of _wasting your time…_ , leaned back into his chair. The detective chewed on his lip for the next minute, focus trained completely on his device.

Barba leaned forward, hand searching toward Carisi, “Honestly—”

“Hey!” Carisi pulled his phone defensively away from the counselor. “I’m a detective aren’t I? Let me do my job.” He hid his smile poorly.

Barba stewed, leaning back in his chair as concession. He realized he had crossed his arms in addition to his crossed legs, and forced himself to untangle his arms so as to appear slightly more mature than a teenager who didn’t get their way. He busied his hands with shuffling the papers and files, knowing full well all the information they contained. He spent a good three minutes reading and rereading the first two sentences of an article on the Brooklyn lieutenant, not needing to continue further as he’d memorized what the rest had to say about the decorated officer. Lieutenant Brian Bandini—saving lives, protecting the community, and in his free time paying low-lifes to threaten civil servants via payphone.

“Hey,” Carisi started. “I got something.” He turned the phone around, handing it to Barba. “These guys look familiar to you?”

Barba took the device and read the headline first – ‘35th Annual Policeman’s Gala Raises $25,000 for Charity’ – and then let his eyes drop to the picture placed beneath. Brian Bandini, dressed in a sharp suit with combed hair and a burgundy tie, stood beside Joe Dumas, the first officer convicted in the Terrence Reynolds shooting. Their arms were slung around each other, beaming in the center of a group of officers.

Barba exhaled through his nose, channeling feelings of determination rather than the plain anxiety that flooded in so often. “When was this taken?”

Carisi stood up and circled in behind Barba’s chair. He reached over the counselor’s shoulder to scroll up on the phone in his hand. Barba hoped the immediate tension that filled his frame wasn’t obvious to the detective.

“Says the article was published in 2013,” Carisi answered. He scrolled down through the article, hovering his face so close to Barba’s that his cheek began to warm from the other man’s breath. Barba maintained his composure, ignoring the observations that he hadn’t had anyone that physically near him in months, or that the detective was wearing something peppermint scented. He refused to let himself swallow with Carisi that close – it felt like an admission of something.

“So there’s the link,” Barba stated, his mind blessing him with something pithy amongst the mist that infiltrated his brain.

Carisi sighed. “Looks like they used to be on some board that throws these fundraisers. My guess is they’re friends and Dumas figured colluding with him would be harder to track than using someone from his own squad.”

“He’s smart. Good to know.”

Carisi had dropped his hand from the phone, and Barba took over, skimming the banal details of the fundraiser and all the good the men of the NYPD were doing for the city.

“Wait one second, scroll back up,” Carisi said. The counselor complied. “Right there.” He stopped at an image in the article of another group of people, this time candid and laughing around a table. “Him. I know him.” Carisi pointed at a young man with light hair seated two away from the Lieutenant. “His name’s Cato. He works on the 3rd floor, Vice.”

A shot of fire ran down into Barba’s stomach and the room felt too small. Carisi stood up, walking around to look him in the face.

“This is it, right?” The detective placed one hand on his hip as the other ran through his hair.

“Or it could be nothing,” Barba answered. Carisi made to say something else, but he cut him off. “I’m sure there are lots of cops from the precinct who were at that gala.”

“Counselor—”  

“The fact that you recognize someone from a random photo in an old article doesn’t implicate him in an intimidation conspiracy.”

“Are you finished?” Carisi asked.

The counselor was taken aback by his attitude, and took a moment to suppress an embarrassed scoff.

“You have something to add?”

Carisi shifted his weight on his heels and crossed his arms. “He asked about you.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The day after you left, I saw him in the lobby and he asked what happened to our ADA. He knew your name.”

More than embarrassed now, he felt fear.

“I…”

“Yeah. I remember thinking it was kinda odd. I barely found out myself and here’s this guy asking me about where you went off to.”  

Barba drew his arms closer around himself. “I suppose that changes my perspective a little.”

“It can’t be a coincidence. I mean, all those guys in Vice are bad news, we know that now, but him asking why you’re out of town, all that, it’s gotta be from him, right?”

Barba didn’t respond immediately, heat clouding around his face. “I don’t know,” he mustered. “Can’t say for sure, but—”

“This fuckin’ guy,” Carisi spat. “Pardon my language, Counselor, but this just makes me fucking sick.” He began to pace. “I’ve taken the elevator with him dozens of times.” He paused his steps, “I know for a fact he’s asked me about cases before. In that kinda small talk way, but still. Fucking despicable.” He whirled on his heel, turning to Barba, face lighting up with excitement. “But hey! This is a lead, right? We can actually do something with this.”

Barba wished he could put his feelings to words like Carisi, place his darting thoughts into emphatic, fragmented sentences, but nothing came to him. His mouth was dry, wondering why he wasn’t feeling the adrenaline of proof, a lead, the chase coming to him like he thought it would.

“Can we? What can we do?” he asked, quiet at first. “You pull his info and then what?” Barba’s voice gained strength as he tugged out of him the taut string of hopelessness. “The most we can hope for is a confirmation of our theory and where does that leave us? They’re still watching me. I still can’t go back to work. I still have to hide and hope I’m not shot in the alley behind my apartment. Knowing who’s holding the gun isn’t going to make a difference.”

“I can talk to him,” Carisi said in a calm contrast to the counselor, waiting a moment before looking up at him.

Barba’s frustration only rose from the other man’s refusal to bow to the defeat that frothed inside him.

“Trying to scare him off will just let them all know you’re in contact with me.”

“I didn’t mean like that. I meant as in, try to get in with him.” Carisi fidgeted in place, clearly uncomfortable by the counselor’s silence. “Go undercover for you, sorta.”

“Seriously?” Barba asked, unsure whether he wanted to laugh or take a shot of something strong enough to knock him out.

Carisi huffed. “I’ve done plenty of stings before. And this will be easier than that, I don’t even have to pretend to be someone else.” He waited while the counselor stared at him, face unchanging. “Not that that’s a problem either. I was undercover for almost a month not too long ago.”

“If I’m not mistaken, weren’t you nearly beaten to death on that particular occasion?”

“That’s besides the point.” Carisi waved him off, to which Barba raised an unappreciative brow. “We caught the guy, didn’t we?”

“What you’re proposing will take a little more finesse than barely escaping with your life.”

“I know that. I can do that. I’ve been a cop for a long time. And not just working with the delicate folks at the SVU. I know what these guys are like. I know how to act like one of them.”

Barba wasn’t sure if this was Carisi acting now, but he believed him. He wondered if perhaps he had always underestimated his abilities, if maybe Carisi had been playing as someone for a long time – someone that he thought Barba would like. If that were the case, Barba was willing to let himself be duped, too tempted with the offer of help and trust to do anything but plunge into agreement.  

“What are you going to say to get in his good graces?” the counselor asked, trying to make his concession less obvious. It was unsuccessful.

Carisi grinned wide enough for his eyes to crinkle before reigning himself in and adjusting to a smirk. “I’ll just tell him I think you’re an arrogant prick and I want in on whatever it is he’s doing.”                  

Heat rose to Barba’s cheeks. “Hilarious. What are you actually going to say?” He stood from his chair, legs too antsy to sit for a second longer.

Carisi gestured vaguely. “I’ll think of something.”

“Such as?”

“Relax a little, will ya? I’ve got this.” The detective looked to Barba hopefully, but sighed with resign when it became clear he wasn’t going to ‘relax’ – not by a long shot. “Look, I’ll play into my Long Island idiot spiel. Usually does the trick for making acquaintances.”

Barba waffled between objecting, _you don’t seem stupid,_ and qualifying, _you don’t seem stupid because you’re from Long Island_. The struggle became apparent from the way Carisi dismissed him with a wave.

“Don’t bother. I’m grateful, honestly. People are half as suspicious of you if they think you’re dumb.”

Barba smirked; he knew how useful it could be to play into stereotypes. Especially in the eyes of the law, where straight white men ruled supreme, it came in handy at times to be written off as merely _‘The Spanish Dandy.’_

“That’s actually rather clever, Carisi.”

“Thanks, Counselor.” The detective took the compliment with such unnerving sincerity. “What can I say,” he started, eyes darting up to meet the counselor’s. “The Joe Schmoe charm works on everybody.”

If Barba wasn’t blushing before, he certainly was now.

“So…” Carisi ran a hand through his hair, the look in his eyes just this side of bashful. “Should we eat that tiramisu?”

 

*

 

Barba made small circles on his empty plate with the tip of his fork, while Carisi took a swipe at some missed cream with his finger. Barba looked away as the detective brought it to his mouth.

“So,” Barba cleared his throat. “How are you all faring without me?”

Carisi flashed him a smile, smacking his lips as he finished licking the tip of his thumb. “We could be better.”

Barba smirked, refusing to indulge himself too much. “Any interesting cases?”

Carisi pushed his plate away from him and leaned back into his chair, wiping his hand against his knee. “Fin’s got a child murder, Amanda’s working a rape case, and Liv’s got her hands in everything, as usual.”

The counselor felt licking flames of excitement, the ghost of a rush. He set his fork down on the plate, pulling himself back. Losing himself in a case sounded blissful until he remembered how lost he was in his own.  

“What about you?” Barba asked.

“Just picking up the slack for everyone else, if I’m being honest. Someone’s gotta do the paperwork.” Carisi twitched his lip as if repressing a reaction.

“Not enough morally-gray-thrillers to go around for poor Detective Carisi,” Barba quipped.

“What do you think I’m doin’ here for?”

Barba would’ve laughed longer but the question sunk in – what exactly was Carisi doing here? Or still doing here, in his apartment, for that matter? To the counselor’s fortune, he was relieved of broaching the topic when Carisi stood up and made his way to the television.

Carisi stood in front of the couch, grabbing the remote placed neatly beside the prim magazines on the coffee table.

“What are you watching right now?” Carisi called, turning on the television and flicking through the channels.

“What am I watching? What does that even mean?” Barba asked.

“You know, like on Netflix. What’s your binge show?”

“Firstly,” Barba stood, walking over to the detective. “I don’t binge anything, and second, I’m currently a little too preoccupied with a full time career and conducting a covert investigation to be watching television.”

“Okay, Sherlock.” Carisi said, looking between the remote and the television and back again. “I think there’s something wrong with your TV. It keeps circling through the same eight channels.”

“That’s because those are the only channels I get,” Barba said as he arrived at Carisi’s side. The detective gave him a blank look, to which he replied, “I don’t have cable.”

Carisi’s eyes went wide. “Are you kidding me?” he asked, practically outraged. “Christ, Barba, you’re even more uppity than I thought.”

Carisi sat, slumping down into the sofa immediately with his legs sprawled out. He changed through the channels again, and Barba slowly, aware of every muscle in his body, sat down beside him. He kept himself flush against the arm of the sofa, careful to keep his arms folded across his lap.

The detective landed on PBS, the program clearly from sometime in the 90s. A woman in a long floral dress and a perm showed off a set of porcelain to an old man in a tweed suit.

“Have you seen this before? Antiques Roadshow?” Carisi asked.

Barba spared him a quick glance. “I’m familiar with the program, yes.”

“Gotta admit, it’s a pretty good time. You should see the money they get for some of this stuff. It blows my mind the cash people are willing to shell out for some ratty old lamp.”

“Personally I prefer when some sad hopeful brings in their most prized antique and it turns out to be a fake.”

“Ugh, you would,” Carisi griped. He threw one arm over the back of the sofa, crossing a leg over the other so his body was turned slightly toward the counselor. “You know every time I watch this, it makes me wanna go back through my grandparent’s attic, see if there’s anything in there I could make a pretty penny off of.”

Carisi proceeded to tell the counselor a lengthy anecdote about a fake treasure map his sisters made for him when he was a kid, leading to a real discovery of an antique civil war coin in their basement. That bled into another story of Carisi using the money he got from selling the coin to buy a moped that he crashed and destroyed only a week later. Completely innocuous, a story that under normal circumstances Barba would have either tuned out or interrupted outright, the counselor instead found himself rapt with the man beside him, gesturing wildly and making fun of himself in all the right places so Barba didn’t have to. _I’m starved,_ Barba told himself. The echo of his empty apartment, empty life, made him crave this attention, this opportunity to speak to and listen to another human. For Barba, he was sure it all had more to do with general loneliness than a draw toward this particular man. The shine of his crinkled eyes was inconsequential, the way his fingers played with the fringe on the throw over the couch had nothing to do with the way Barba’s body turned slowly toward the other man, relaxed, unaware.

The detective’s story took over half the episode to tell, and when they were finished, Carisi started them on a game of _Trash or Treasure_ – in where they had to guess whether the item that the guest brought on the show was worth anything or not. Barba won three to one in the first episode, prompting Carisi to demand a rematch with the episode that followed. They tied, and Carisi argued for his final round using as many legal terms as humanly possible until Barba conceded the victory.    

A Masterpiece Theater presentation began to play, and Barba felt the palpable hesitation between their bodies. Carisi shifted his foot and a shot of mortified heat ran through Barba’s spine at the realization that theirs had been touching. Carisi looked at the screen, blank faced, as if waiting for Barba to make an indication of what they were going to do next. Carisi reached in his pocket for his phone, checking the time. A sudden panic settled into the counselor’s stomach at the thought of the other man rising, making an awkward apology for the late hour, and leaving. So before Carisi could say anything, Barba picked up the remote and changed the channel.

He decided to put on the 11 o’clock news. Carisi resettled himself on the couch, tucking one of his legs under his body. The first story just so happened to be on the case Fin was working, and so Carisi regaled Barba with the details that the press wasn’t privy to. It was all they needed to revive the previous temperament, Carisi even knocking his knee accidentally against Barba’s without him jumping to the other end of the couch.

In the middle of the weather report, Carisi’s phone chirped. He took it from his pocket and held it in his palm, eyes scanning the screen as he read the text.

“Everything alright?” Barba asked, keeping his tone as neutral as he could manage it.

“Yeah, just,” Carisi rubbed his thumb along his brow. “It’s work. They’re calling me back in, a robbery and possible assault in the Meatpacking District.”

“Oh.” Barba shifted so he was sitting upright. Carisi did the same. “I suppose you’ll be…” Barba wasn’t sure why he didn’t end the sentence, or why he even spoke at all. Of course he was leaving.

“Do you want me to stay?” Carisi asked, jarring Barba so that his mouth hung open with no immediate reply. “It’s overtime so technically I don’t have to go in if I don’t want to.”

What did him staying even mean, Barba’s mind raced. It was nearing midnight – did staying mean until they were done talking, until they got tired, until the morning? And for what, so Barba could feel safe, or because maybe Carisi wanted to? Did Carisi want him to say yes, or was even thinking this a way of distracting himself from the fact that he did too?

Barba’s mind snapped into clarity, clearing his throat and saying, “No, no it’s fine. I’m fine.”

Carisi nodded, glancing back at his phone. “You sure?”

“Of course. Besides, you’re needed. What excuse would you have otherwise for turning Liv down?”

Carisi huffed. “You know that I do have a life outside of work, right, Counselor?”

“Mm, such as that Netflix show you were talking about?”

Carisi rolled his eyes and stood, typing a reply on his phone. Barba stood as well, smoothing out the wrinkles from his shirt as he waited for the detective to gather his things.

“So, I’ll call ya?” Carisi asked, patting his pockets.

“That’s the new plan? I wait around for you to call me with updates about the dirty cops you’re fraternizing with?”  

Carisi sighed. “No, obviously. We’ll have to figure something out.” He looked around, hand running through his hair. There was never a moment when the detective wasn’t moving it seemed, and Barba often, and especially now, had the urge to stop his hand in its tracks, still his fidgeting with a single gesture. “I’ll find a way to talk to Cato – I’ll be subtle, I promise – and then I’ll come over and we can figure out a game plan together. Sound good to you?”

“Fine,” Barba said, although in truth it sounded far from fine. The concept of Carisi visiting him again in a few day’s time was agonizing, both for the wait and its proximity to the present. “And I suppose in the meantime I’ll just—”

“Get a cable subscription,” Carisi said. “Trust me, your life will get a whole lot better.”

Barba gave him an exaggerated eye roll as the detective smirked and stretched his arms up, rolling his shoulders.

“I’ll call you,” Carisi said, walking backwards toward the door. “You can text me if you need anything.”

“Carisi,” Barba started, too aware of how petulant he sounded.

“I mean it, Counselor. We’re all grown-ups here, we can admit when we need help, right?”

“Don’t you have a crime scene waiting for you?”

Carisi relented and turned to the door, pressing himself close to the peephole. Barba stood behind him, feet rooted no less than a yard away. He watched the back of the other man, one palm planted against the door, shoulder blades arching out against his shirt where he leaned in. He noticed a dozen little things in a matter of seconds, like the rosy tint of his ears and the patches of gray coming in at his temples, all clouding out the worry of someone passing on the other side of the door.

Then quite plainly a thought occurred to him that took precedence over every one of his senses: _God I don’t want him to leave._

Carisi turned the doorknob silently and with great care, shooting a small warm smile at the counselor before stepping through the threshold and out of sight.

The door clicked shut. Barba remained immobile, fighting the urge to rush to the peephole or window and watch the detective go. Instead he stood still, pacing his breathing to something close to normal. Things were, and could only become, far worse than he ever thought. The echo of Carisi’s laughter and hands grazing the objects in his home reverberated against the back of Barba’s skull, down into the divots of his vertebrae. Between two nameable conspirators and his now - regrettably - undeniable affections, Barba was left alone with the overwhelming feeling of peril.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All inaccuracies regarding broadway productions of Cabaret and the dates used for old cases of SVU are, as they say, my bad.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao eyyy only 5 months later :)) enjoy

The first attempt was so embarrassing Carisi swore never to talk about it. It happened in the elevator, where the majority of Carisi and Cato’s interactions took place. He had spent a solid 36 hours trying to figure out a way to talk to the vice detective that the first time he saw him, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.  

“Hey!” Carisi said, far too enthusiastic for an early Monday morning. He had just pressed the up button when the other man appeared at his side, looking up from his phone with a coffee in his hand. He was young, taller and wider than Carisi, with hair a sickly white-blond combed back and hardened with gel. Carisi swallowed, shutting down the blinking thought of who would beat whom in a physical fight.

“Hey,” Cato offered, weak with mild confusion. “Carisi, right?”

“Yes, sir.” Carisi smiled, mind racing for literally anything to talk about. “Cato…Is that Greek or something?”

“My parents are from Michigan.”

Carisi nodded, panicking.

“Hey, did I hear that you guys busted that cocaine ring running out of that Laundromat?”

Cato paused a moment, looking past Carisi at the lit up button. “No, I don’t think that was us.” He made brief eye contact with Carisi. “I’m mainly in prostitution.”

“Oh,” Carisi eked out. His face brightened comically when the elevator dinged its arrival. They stepped through the threshold and stood beside one another, Carisi tapping his toe in time with the silence. “Well hey, maybe we’ll end up on a case together one of these days.” He cringed internally at the plasticity of his own smile.

Cato returned it with a pitying thin-lipped smile. The elevator had never moved slower.

“Is that a mocha or something?” Carisi bumbled, nodding at the other man’s coffee.

“Uh, no. Just plain black.”

Carisi whistled, “Tough guy – I can’t stand the stuff myself. I’m pouring half the sugar shaker in there to cover up the taste.”

Before he could finish his sentence, the doors had opened and Cato was halfway out onto his floor, giving Carisi a halfhearted wave. It took at least an hour of mindlessly filling out paperwork for the heat to finally drain from Carisi’s cheeks.

The next day he was called out to a crime scene first thing in the morning, therefore missing the opportunity to face his embarrassment head on. That evening when leaving the office, he decided to take the stairs down in a fit of cowardice.

Wednesday morning Cato entered Carisi’s elevator just as the doors were closing. Blissfully, there were two other officers in there with them and Carisi gave him a terse nod while pretending to text on his phone.

It would take another two days before Carisi would succeed in his efforts, and rather skillfully at that.

 

 

During the week, Carisi’s caseload had finally picked up, which he might have been more appreciative of if 1) it didn’t mean there was an excess of crime in Manhattan, and 2) if he weren’t plagued with the stress of trying to befriend a crooked cop who had no interest in knowing him whatsoever.

There was also another confusing and a mildly terrifying development, in that since Carisi left Barba’s apartment the previous Saturday, the two had not stopped texting each other.

Carisi messaged the counselor when he got back to his own apartment, after it had turned out there was no sexual assault during the robbery he left for. He just wanted to check in, make sure Barba was alright after leaving the counselor on a somber, withdrawn note. After the first text, it was like they had picked up the conversation where it left off. For once, it felt like Carisi wasn’t the only one who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.   

Texting Barba was an exhilarating if not exhausting experience. When it came to banter with Barba, Carisi felt like a green belt karate student going up against Muhammad Ali.

Carisi wasn’t much for texting, and he suspected the counselor wasn’t either given his refusal to use abbreviations – but how else was he supposed to talk to him? Asking to come over felt too forward, and embarrassing, Barba’s dismissive voice cropping up in his mind saying something condescending like _I don’t need a babysitter_ , _Carisi_. That tired way he said his name, like Carisi was the most deeply annoying and dumb adult while Barba was the tortured and angst-ridden teenager. So he did his best, baiting Barba where necessary, leaning into his own opinions and background which always did wonders to get the counselor going off in the opposite. At times it felt like he was playing a game where the objective was to say whatever was needed to ensure another response, another text, keep the counselor entertained. And when the conversation would die, most nights around 11:30 when Barba went to bed, Carisi woke the next morning to find a text waiting for him. It was relief to know he wasn’t the only one playing the game. On Thursday morning he got the courage to text first, and failed to suppress an idiotic smile at the near immediate response.

> Thurs. 6:16 AM
> 
> Morning Counselor! Happy Thursday :)
> 
> Thank you for informing me that it’s Thursday – time has lost all meaning since becoming a hermit. I might finally be gaining perspective on what it’s like for all the people I put away.
> 
> I think you got it a little nicer than people in prison…
> 
> At least they have a free gym.

  
The truth of what was happening was far more uncomfortable than what Carisi anticipated. They were becoming friends, and while it was a wish he harbored since the first time the counselor shot him down with a sly remark, actually living it entailed daily bouts of panicked anxiety over choosing his words perfectly, feeling even dumber than he had before, and a nervous tic where he felt phantom vibrations in his pocket and therefore spent at least 40 minutes of every hour checking his lock screen. The stray warm feelings when he caught himself smiling idly or spacing out while doing paperwork weren’t unwelcome per se, though they brought on a kind of wariness he wasn’t used to. Did he have a crush on the counselor? Yes - but that wasn’t news. The news was that there was a part of his brain convincing him that just maybe the crush was no longer unreciprocated, and it was growing like a tumor.

“I’m calling it at 20,” Fin said.

“Ok, I’ll see your 20 and go with 25.” Rollins gave Fin a devilish smile.

Her leg was propped up on her chair, leaning her elbow over to rest on her desk. The two detectives looked over in the direction of the interrogation room, where the lieutenant had entered earlier with a perp she specially requested to interview alone. He was a sickly, greasy little man who was clearly uncomfortable with Benson’s authority and femininity, and Fin and Rollins decided to take bets on how long it would take for the lieutenant to break him.

“Carisi, you want in on this?” Fin called over where the detective sat at his desk. “Loser’s buying lunch.”

“Huh?” Carisi looked up from his phone - no new texts. “Uh, no, I’m good. And broke. ‘Sides, Fin, what do you think you’re doing, encouraging Amanda like that?”

“You shut your mouth, pretty boy,” Rollins cut in. “I’m dying for some pad thai and that peanut sauce is gonna taste a whole lot sweeter knowing I didn’t pay for it.”

Carisi tossed his head back to his paperwork, only taking a half-glance at his phone before settling in.

Moments later the interrogation room door slammed shut, Olivia emerging on the other side with a sheet of paper in her hand.

She held it up as she breezed past the others, turning back to shout, “Full confession.”

“Oh!” Fin and Rollins chimed in unison.

“Damn,” Fin started, looking at his watch. “That was fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Who the hell is buying me lunch then?” Rollins asked in dismay.

“Question now is whether Emory can manage to take it to court without it going up in flames.” Fin turned to Rollins, and they shared a look of exasperation.

Rollins chewed on her cheek. “Really makes you miss Barba, don’t it?”

Carisi restrained his head from jerking up.

“What do you think he’s doing right now?” Fin asked.

“Yachting?” Rollins hazarded a guess.

“What’s that fancy sport rich folks play? It’s like golf on horses.”

As they bantered, Carisi’s phone lit up, and a text from Barba previewed on the screen: 

> (212) 555-6142  
>  Just won a heated battle between myself and a spider that took up residency in the kitchen. No such thing as squatter’s rights.

Carisi burst out laughing, not just because of the text, but because of the absurdity between the life they all imagined for Barba in the present, and the one that he actually lived. The fact that Carisi was the only living person privy to that life was confusing and embarrassing and terrific all at once.

“What?” Rollins asked, cutting through Carisi’s reverie. He looked over to her, surprised to feel the attention of the room suddenly focused on him.

“Huh?” he coughed, cheeks coloring, eyes darting between their faces. He turned his phone face down on the desk.

“What’s so funny?” Rollins furthered, and Fin looked on at him with similar judgmental curiosity.

“Uh,” Carisi started, completely clueless as to what was going to come out of his mouth. “I remembered a joke.”

“You remembered a joke?” Fin repeated in perfect deadpan.

“Well let’s hear it,” Rollins prodded.

Carisi’s throat tightened up. “Ah, I can’t tell it right. I’m no good with jokes.”

“C’mon, I wanna know what’s got you busting up over there by yourself.”

Carisi looked to Fin helplessly, but found no sympathy in his gaze.

“Enlighten us,” Fin said, crossing his arms and leaning back against his desk.

Carisi racked his brain and all that came to mind was a long joke his cousin had told him at a barbeque the summer before when they were both drunk and avoiding their aunts. The joke involved a priest, a clown car, and a seeing-eye dog, and he pulled the joke from his memory as he told it, taking numerous pauses to recall where the hell it was going and make his way to the entirely unfunny punchline.

When he finished, Rollins stared back with a scowl on her face while Fin raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips.

“Christ, Carisi,” Rollins broke the ensuing silence. “That was fuckin’ terrible. I gotta take you to a comedy club sometime, because that was shameful.”

“I told you I’m no good with jokes,” Carisi answered weakly.

“That’s no excuse,” Rollins said. She plopped in her chair and Fin turned away from both of them, heading toward the vending machine. “The fact that you even thought that was funny…” She shook her head as she picked up her pen and flicked open a file.

As Fin made to cross the threshold to the break room, Benson walked in and called to him. “Fin, I need you. Now.”

He turned on his heels, and walked out to join her with his hands in his pockets and a face full of disappointment.

“You two, hold down the fort,” Benson addressed the others.

“Aye aye, captain,” Rollins replied without looking up.

Carisi wanted the day to be over. He wanted to go home, put on his sweats, and curl into his couch with a movie on in the background that he could completely ignore while he texted Barba. He succumbed to the temptation of his phone, this time going as far as opening his messages and scrolling through their conversation from the night before, where Barba revealed that his favorite pastry was a bear claw, because when he was a kid his favorite animal was the bear.

“Whatcha smilin’ at, Sonny boy?” Rollins was suddenly in front of Carisi, rolling herself in her chair to an angle where she could see his phone.

Carisi locked his phone and put it in his pocket. “Nothing, just ah, my sister texting me about my nephew.”

“How’s the little guy doin’?”

“All good. Tommy got a new job so they’re thinking of moving to a bigger place.”

“That’s great,” Rollins nodded, leaning back in her chair.

“Mhm,” Carisi answered, beginning to squirm under her gaze. He picked up his pen as she continued to appraise him, waiting for whatever it was she wanted to ask to worm its way out of her mouth.

“And what about you? It’s been a minute since we’ve hung out.”

Carisi sighed in relief, grateful that her interrogating wasn’t more specific. “Same old, same old. You know?”

“Not really.” She laughed at herself, eyes focusing on something far away and turning contemplative. “I’ve got a baby who’s trying to kill herself by putting every object and non-edible substance in her mouth every 2 minutes.” She brought her gaze and a wry grin back to Carisi. “Always something new and exciting.”

“Ah, I miss that kid.”

“She misses you. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“I’ve got trial prep with Emory in the afternoon.” They shared a glance. “I know. That’ll finish up in a few decades. But other than that, nothing.”

“Why don’t you come over after and watch some reality TV.” She kicked his foot with her own. “I could use a night with the magic baby-muffler.”

He couldn’t think of a single thing reason to say no other than the overwhelming desire to seclude himself away from the world and text Barba until his fingers fell off.

“Sounds good,” he said, digging his fingernails into his palm. “I’ll text you when I’m out.”

“Fantastic!” Rollins clapped him on the back hard enough that he pitched forward, knocking his paper clip cup all over the desk. She giggled at his expense, and before Carisi could retaliate, he was interrupted by his ringing phone.

“Manhattan SVU,” Carisi answered. The voice on the other line relayed to him information regarding a situation uptown, while Rollins popped up and leaned over him.

“Who is it? Is it a new case? We goin’ somewhere?”

Carisi elbowed her aside while attempting to cover his other ear to hear better. She pushed back until her ear shared the receiver.

“Yes ma’am,” he said into the phone, mouthing _MOVE_ to the detective beside him. “I’ll be there in 20.” He hung up the phone and Rollins pulled back to glare at him.

“You are so rude, you know,” she said, placing a hand on her hip.

Carisi rolled his eyes while pulling on his jacket. “I’m going uptown,” he said, and at seeing her face light up, he added, “You’re staying here. They only need one of us.”

Rollins groaned as she collapsed back into her chair with a thud, pushing off Carisi’s desk and rolling back toward her own.

“Fine,” she said, “I’ll be here, picking up all y’all’s slack on the paperwork.”

Before he turned to leave, he spied Rollins opening up a small screen of spider solitaire in the corner of her screen. He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he walked to the elevator, and without sparing a moment for insecurity, typed out a message to Barba about the squabble that had just transpired.

 

* * *

 

Adding insult to injury, Emory insisted that Carisi come to her for trial prep. He never minded going to Barba’s office for prep, but making the trek to Emory’s cramped back office near the bathrooms was never a pleasant experience. Her reception area wasn’t so much a reception area as two metal folding chairs posted outside her door. No fancy coffee maker like in Barba’s office, no cozy dark leather couches or reading material of any kind. His phone was on 15% battery and he’d be waiting much longer than its lifespan based on Emory’s track record with these things. Just as he decided to play bejeweled until his screen went black, Cato rounded the corner and sat down in the chair beside him.

Carisi’s pulse skyrocketed. “Hey! What’re you doing here?” He hoped his disproportionate enthusiasm covered for his spooked nerves.

Cato raised his eyebrows and sighed, dropping the newspaper in his hand at his feet. “Testifying for Emory.”

Carisi turned in his chair to face him, cranking up his friendliest smile. “Didn’t I say we’d end up on a case together one of these days?”

“Don’t sound too excited, a prostitute was murdered.” Cato gave him a sidelong glance.

“Of course.” Carisi’s face fell into stony embarrassment. “It’s a tragedy.” If he could have slapped himself without seeming deranged, he would have. He sat back in his chair and put his hands in his pockets.

“I’m just busting your balls, man,” Cato said, punching Carisi lightly on his arm.

Carisi huffed a breath of relief, a nervous smile crossing his face. “You can never tell these days. With my squad, everything’s gotta be PC every damn second.”

Cato shook his head. “I would’ve lost it already if I was you.”

“I’m gettin’ there, let me tell you.”  Carisi swallowed, steeling himself to test how careless the man beside him truly was. “LGBTXYZ – I can never keep that bullshit straight in my head.”

“Huh, you know, I would’ve pegged you as another SVU pansy.”

“Please,” Carisi scoffed. “I’m newest to the squad, so maybe that makes me the odd man out, but frankly I don’t like a single one of them.”

“Not even that hot little blond? Please tell me you’re hitting that.”

The hand in Carisi’s pocket clenched into a fist. He hoped his pinched, forced smile looked more like embarrassment rather than fury.

“I’m workin’ on it.”

Cato smirked in a way so sleazy it made Carisi’s stomach turn. How far was he willing to go to please this guy? His cheeks heated and he restrained himself from jiggling his leg; the tension trapped in his body manifested instead into cruel, disingenuous statements. He remembered what it was like though, being on other squads, being _one of the boys._ And it was working like a charm.

“I gotta say,” Cato started. “It’s good to know there’s someone in SVU who’s got some sense. The rest of us tend to give a wide berth to all of you because of your… How do I put this – your squad has the reputation of being a little too cozy with 1 PP.”

Carisi nodded his head emphatically, shaping himself into a convincing vision of the one asshole outcast at SVU. His phone buzzed in his pocket on the periphery of his awareness.

“They’ve got no loyalty,” Carisi said. He looked down the hall and leaned a little closer to Cato, dropping his voice before saying, “I wouldn’t put it past ‘em to throw me under the bus for some junkie ‘victim’ who’s asking for it in the first place.”

Too far? What was he even saying? He felt sick exhilaration at the way Cato seemed to relax further with every disparaging word he said against his squad. Against basic empathy.

Cato leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. “You’re right to watch your back. Our boys at VICE have no love for the SVU to put it lightly. Now that friend of yours, Dodds?”

Carisi sighed and crossed himself. Another buzzing text. Cato looked Carisi straight in the eyes, speaking to him without a trace of wryness or sarcasm for the first time.

“Now that was a real tragedy. Blood spilled for nothing. But if your squad hadn’t gone after that CO then he’d still be here today. You know that.”

The look on Cato’s face was pure conviction. Genuine dismay at the loss of life, genuine belief that it was SVU’s fault.

“I do,” Carisi said. The full force of what he was up against, what Barba was up against, hit Carisi for the first time. In their own minds, Cato and every cop like him were the good guys. Barba and SVU were the unhinged faction, the turncoats, the poisoned apples. How could Carisi ever keep Barba safe from an army of people who knew they were doing the right thing?

Two more successive texts rattled in Carisi’s pocket.

“Do you wanna answer that?” Cato asked, glancing at the dim glow peeking from the hem of Carisi’s pocket.

His stomach sank at the knowledge that Barba was in his apartment, oblivious, while Carisi flirted with the enemy. Would he be proud or disgusted?

“Nah, it’s just some chick who won’t stop texting me,” Carisi said, waving him off.

“I feel you there. And it’s always the hot one’s so-so friend who won’t leave you alone, am I right?”

Cato proceeded to tell an anecdote of what would probably qualify as coerced sex, while Carisi nodded and chuckled in all the right places. The guard that Cato held around him for the past week had lowered to reveal nothing other than your average dangerously over-confident man, and all it took were a few compromised morals and a bitten tongue on Carisi’s part. As their conversation shifted from girls, to bars, to the best sports bar on the lower west side, to football, Carisi thought in another life the two probably would’ve been fine friends. The kind of friend he was used to having, that he’d go out for drinks with in groups, never solo, that would shake his head when Carisi said something stupid but never call him on it. The friend that never looked deeper at him than his idiot mouth and that Carisi frankly didn’t want looking any deeper for fear of the sincerity or naiveté they might find. Cato was the kind of guy Carisi spent his whole life trying to blend in as, and who in the company of, made him feel completely and starkly alone.

Carisi’s phone vibrated as Emory popped her head out of her door, beckoning Cato inside. He was too relieved to be free of the mindless manly-man conversation to point out that he had actually arrived first. The moment her door banged shut, he rooted his phone out and scanned through the texts from Barba. His veins flooded with something cool and shaky, rippling out through his fingertips as he typed a hasty request – _can I come over later? I got news –_ and his heart jittered happily with the hasty response – _ravioli or chicken?_

 

* * *

 

If Carisi had his choice of superpower, he’d always pick flight – a boring answer but a genuine one – and he felt that longing all too painfully just then, when all he wanted was to zoom over Manhattan traffic and straight into Barba’s apartment. As it was, he had no wings and his only clean suit jacket was still at his desk. He rounded back to the precinct – sprinted more like – barely sparing Rollins a wave as he slung the jacket over his shoulder and turned off his desk lamp.

“Hey to you too, Carisi,” she said, spinning in her chair to face him.  

He turned around with his back to the exit, giving her a split second of his attention. “Hello Amanda,” he said. “Goodbye Amanda.” With that, he made to leave.

“Where are you rushing off to?” Rollins called after him. “I thought we were gonna take the train together to my place. Maybe stop at the bodega beforehand? I’m out of string cheese.”

“Oh crap.” Carisi stopped in his tracks, dread watering in his mouth. “I forgot to text you…” He wanted a better excuse at the ready, something not so cliché, but ten more milliseconds and her face would turn from curious to pissed. “It’s Bella. She needs me to babysit tonight.”

Her face dropped anyway. “Oh come on, what happened to her sitter?”

“She moved,” Carisi blurted. Rollins’ eyes went wide and her whole face turned to utter disbelief. Bad call. “Well, she’s moving,” he tried. “Apartments, I mean. I dunno, she’s busy for a while I guess. I’m on call until she gets it together.”

Rollins paused; traces of suspicion still lined her brow and pulled at the corners of her mouth. He thought she might say something, try to make him weasel out of ‘babysitting’ or worse, try to weasel the truth out – but in a stroke of luck, she turned back to her computer with a bored and disappointed expression.

“Can’t rely on anyone in this city can ya?” she drawled, shutting down her computer and shuffling papers into stacks on her desk.

“Rain check. I promise.”

Unlike before, it was guilt that sped his feet out the door and down into the subway.

 

 

Carisi couldn’t quite recall clambering up the fire escape or sneaking down the hall past Barba’s neighbors. All the little sights, smells and sounds between Rollins’ voice yelling something snarky to him as he left the precinct to the muffled click of Barba’s door opening were lost to him. The man he’d been texting like a 12-year-old for the past week was in the same room as him again, and the unguarded delight he felt at seeing the counselor in a sweater and jeans was almost too good to be embarrassing. Almost.

In his excitement, it didn't occur to him to feel shy until he sat down at the table for the meal. Barba made the ravioli - a bold choice considering he'd be feeding it to a real Italian - and while it didn't taste authentic, it had enough flavor generally to make up for any judgments Carisi might have had against it. As he walked Barba through his conversation with Cato – which the counselor interjected with welcome commentary of his own on every statement – Carisi found himself staring somewhat. Particularly at one tuft of hair center above Barba’s forehead. The look was so different than the quaffed and slicked style he was used to from the counselor, and he found it regrettably adorable.

“So did you see him when he left her office?” Barba asked.

Carisi snapped his attention back to the present, lowering his gaze a few centimeters down to Barba's eyes. Somehow even looking directly at him was distracting.

“Yeah, but we didn't chat or nothin’. He said he'd see me around and then I went in.”

“I must admit, I'm impressed.” Barba patted the corners of his mouth his with napkin and placed it on top of the table. “You have the blue-collar dick routine down pat.” His eyebrow flickered upward. “It's a little unsettling how good you are at it.”

“I’ve got cousins that say way worse things than him. Cato at least thinks he's a good guy. My cousins just like being assholes.”

Barba stood and grabbed his plate. “If I recall correctly you weren't exactly a goody two shoes when you joined the squad.”

Carisi rolled his eyes. “Half of that wasn’t even real. I get obnoxious when I’m new and trying to make a good impression.”

“You thought that mustache would make a good impression,” Barba asked over his shoulder as he walked into the kitchen.

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad,” Carisi called, following with his plate in hand.

“Yes it was.”

“People liked that mustache other places I worked.” Carisi joined Barba at the sink and placed his dish in the basin. “It makes me look older so they take me more seriously.”

Barba turned on the water and began rinsing the plates. “And which of the three squads you were kicked off took you seriously?”

Carisi laughed and placed a hand over his chest in mock-offense. “Oh come on, low blow, counselor.”

Barba laughed too until Carisi elbowed him lightly in the ribs.

“Alright alright, I take it back,” Barba said, flinching slightly when Carisi feigned another jab.

They had fallen into a rhythm, Barba scrubbing the plates with a sponge and handing them to Carisi for rinsing and placing in the drying rack.

“I’m not kidding,” Carisi said. “It plays with an older crowd.”

“I’m pretty sure Liv, Fin and I qualify as ‘an older crowd.’”

“Come on, you’re not that old.”

“No need to flatter me, Carisi.”

If Carisi didn’t know better, he’d almost say it looked like Barba was blushing.

“I’m serious,” Carisi said. “You can’t be that much older than me. You don’t even know how old I am.”

Barba twisted his mouth into a thin, wry smirk. He leaned back from the water, angling himself toward Carisi and gesturing with the sponge in his right hand. “Fine, let me ask you this. When you were a kid, what was the cool cop show on TV?”

Carisi thought for a moment. “Miami Vice.”

“That’s what I thought. You’re a child.” Barba turned back to the sink with sass in his swivel.

Carisi grabbed at the faucet, flattening his palm against the stream so it sprayed directly onto the counselor’s chest.

“Hey!” Barba yelped.

Carisi shushed him with a smile. “Won’t your neighbor hear us?” He gestured to the wall beside the kitchen with a jerk of his head.

“Not tonight,” Barba brushed at the droplets clinging to the front of his sweater. “He’s out.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if he’s home, then the dulcet sounds of CNN are constantly streaming through the walls. Constantly. Guess I should just consider myself lucky it’s not Fox News.”

Carisi chuckled and clanged several bowls together to fit another wet dish into the drying rack. “What was your cool cop show when you were a kid, then?”

Barba scrubbed at a stubborn spot on the saucepan with unnecessary vigor. “This is embarrassing, I regret asking you,” he grumbled.

“Come on, just tell me.”

Barba paused, looking like he was weighing whether it was more embarrassing to tell the truth or get splashed in the face again.

He stared pointedly at the stain on the pan as he told the detective, “I was a fan of Kojak.”

“Kojak?” Carisi barked, grinning from ear to ear. “Seriously? I think my dad still watches that.”

“Then your dad has very fine taste.”

“Not even Starsky and Hutch?”

Barba crinkled his nose. “Starsky and Hutch was absurd, I couldn’t stand it.”

“What about like, the A Team – did you ever watch that?”

He placed the remaining pan in the rack with a flourish. “Unregrettably, no.”

“Oh you gotta. It’s fantastic.”

Barba dried his hands on a towel slung around the fridge door handle. He tossed it to Carisi. “That remains to be seen.”

Barba led the way to the couch, Carisi following to plop down on the other end.

“Oh,” Barba sat up with a start and headed back to the kitchen. “I nearly forgot.” Carisi heard the sound of a popping cork and wine pouring into glasses. He looked at his hands in his lap, repressing a grin.

It occurred to him that the portion of the evening where he actually told Barba about his conversation with Cato only lasted about 10 minutes - all of which could have just as easily been texted. But Barba didn't complain or try to stop him or push him away. Was that a sign? A sign of what? Not hating him and liking him were different things, as were liking him because he was the only other person he could contact versus actually, genuinely liking him.

“Shit,” Barba murmured from the kitchen.

“Everything ok in there?” Carisi craned his neck but couldn’t see behind the counter.

“Sure,” he said, carrying wine glasses in each hand by the base, a muddled stain darkening the front of his charcoal sweater. “I just have to throw this sweater away.”

“Oh man,” Carisi said, gauging if there was actual upset behind the sarcasm. “Do you wanna change?”

“No, it’s fine. I got this sweater in 1995, it’s about time I tossed it.”

“Can I hazard a guess that 1995 was the last time you bought clothing that wasn’t a designer suit?”

Barba sniffled a laugh into his wine as he tipped it back.

“No no,” he said, pointing at Carisi. “You don’t get to knock my clothes. Not when you’ve been copying my look for the past year.”

Carisi’s ears burned. “I what?”

“Don’t play dumb, you absolutely have been copying me.”

He laughed and threw up his hands in surrender. “I’m just trying to look professional.”

“Mhmm, and when you joined SVU your idea of professional was a polyester tie and a khaki suit.”

“I wasn’t _that_ bad.”

“I’m not being conceited, I swear,” Barba chuckled, “I just wonder what made you realize the error of your ways.”

Carisi narrowed his eyes. “I feel like I’m being cross-examined here.”

Barba set his glass on the coffee table. “My apologies. As you can see, I miss court.”

“I don’t know,” Carisi took a sip, refusing to let on how bitter it tasted to him. “ I’m starting to think you just like fighting.”

“I don't like fighting, I like arguing. There's a difference.” Barba smirked and crossed his arms.

“Yeah, like how you can only win an argument but I could win both.” Carisi swished the liquid around in his cup before bringing it to his mouth to hide his smile.

Barba’s eyes widened in mock offense. “Oh is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That almost sounds like a challenge.”

“Sure thing. Let’s settle this in the alley right now, that won’t be conspicuous or nothin.”

Going on instinct was usually a bad call for Carisi - his mouth got him in trouble constantly and his split second decisions had nearly lost him his job more than once. But with Barba, every instinctive thing he said or did seemed to play so well. His presence didn't just ping off Barba’s guard like it used to, his words and actions actually landed. And when they did, the counselor responded with something perfectly suited to further the conversation. Neither were known for being quiet, but lately with Barba, it never felt like they were talking over each other.

Barba tucked his knees underneath him, cradling his glass again and avoiding eye contact. Carisi blamed the wine for his general giddiness, how amusing the counselor looked all curled up like a little kid when not long ago he nearly had a panic attack over sitting on the floor. They bantered back and forth, covering the topics of suit jackets, professionalism in the workplace, and the legal validity of saying “withdrawn” after being objected.

Barba laughed loudly at Carisi’s impression of Buchanan and his voice cut out at the faintest sound of keys jingling in the hall. Barba closed his mouth tight, a glint in his eye saying he was likely to burst out laughing again at any provocation. Carisi went still, able to follow the sounds of Barba’s neighbor next door moving through the door, and going straight to the TV to set it on blaring MSNBC.

“Told you,” Barba whispered. Carisi stifled a laugh and set his glass carefully on the table.

“I guess I should go,” he whispered back. “I wouldn’t want to blow your cover just because I’m so hilarious.”

Barba hummed softly. “True. Although that impression was to die for, I don’t think I’d like to literally die for it.”

Carisi smiled and rose from the couch, stretching out all his limbs in a wide arch of his back. When he unscrunched his eyes Barba was standing near the wall that joined with his neighbor’s, listening.

Carisi joined him at his side.

“What are you listening for?”

Barba held a finger up, ear cocked slightly to the wall. He waited a moment longer for something Carisi couldn’t hear and then turned to him.

“Now you can go. He’s in the shower. Hear that?” He pointed at the wall, where all Carisi could hear was a talking head going off about foreign allies.

“No,” he laughed.

Barba rolled his eyes. “Being cooped up here gave me a good ear. I’d be impressed with myself if it weren’t so pathetic.”

They turned simultaneously toward the door; Carisi felt like there were weights attached to his feet, something dragging him down as he moved. In the span of thirty minutes something shifted inside Carisi. Where before he was nervous and checking every reaction to his words, he felt lighter and freer, like he could glide through any conversation and interaction without the risk of being distrusted or written off. He stood behind Barba as he listened at the door, almost hoping there’d be someone out there he’d have to wait for to leave.

 

* * *

 

After gently rapping on the door, it occurred to Carisi that surprising Barba at his apartment when there were men trying to kill him probably wasn’t the best idea. He’d barely slept. It was his own bright 2 AM idea to go to the precinct and pull files which kept him there until 4, leaving only 3 hours for sleep. The stack of papers in his arms and the bag in his hand felt like dead weight the millisecond after he realized knocking was the last thing he should’ve done.

In a moment of panic, he walked back to the staircase. He didn’t want Barba to see him through the peephole and think he’d been forced there, that someone else was waiting right around the corner. He hadn’t been compromised, just momentarily mentally incapacitated by sleepless excitement. He sat on the first step and texted the counselor a hurried apology.

Sorry that was me. My brains not awake yet - can you let me in?

He waited two solid minutes before he got a reply.

Fine. Don’t knock, I’ll open the door when I see you through the peephole.

Carisi breathed relief and hurried in silence to the door. He stood square in front of it, looking anywhere but at the picture taped at eye level. After half a minute the door opened, centimeter by centimeter, revealing a widening sliver of Barba’s apartment. Carisi stepped forward with caution. He put a hand on the door and pushed in.

He turned around once he crossed the threshold to see Barba standing beside the door, a thick glass vase in his hands.

Carisi almost laughed. “What—”

“Were you followed here?”

“What? No—”

“Are you being watched? Recorded?” Barba’s nostrils flared, giving away his unease despite his guarded expression.

“No,” Carisi said, trying to drop his voice lower and calmer.

Barba paused, seeming to wrack his brain for something. “If you’re really here on your own, and you knocked because it really just _slipped your mind_ , what did you order, that day at the diner when I met you before the stake out?”

Carisi almost blushed because him asking meant he remembered. He had a second of hesitation when he thought maybe he himself had forgotten.

“Chili cheese fries.”

Barba let the vase drop to his side. “Ok.”

Carisi chuckled. “Were you seriously gonna knock me out with that?”

Barba glared. “I didn’t have a lot of options.”

Carisi ran a hand through his hair, forcing himself to slough off his own embarrassment. “Guess we should come up with some kind of code word, huh?”

“Or you could try a little harder to not completely blow our cover. Just a thought.”

Carisi rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright, my bad. Can I make it up to you with this?” He flapped his arm holding the stack of papers.

Barba eyed them with suspicion. “What is it?”

“Last night I pulled all the personnel files I could find associated with Cato, and any partners he’s had in the last five years.”

Barba widened his eyes.

Carisi looked at his shoes. “I figured we should try to find out as much about this guy as possible before I go making friends, am I right?” Barba gestured for the stack. Carisi held back. “I’ll need them back by Monday though. Can’t have ‘em missing too long. It’ll look suspicious.”

“Did it not look suspicious when you were down there pulling an officer’s personnel files?”

Carisi sighed. It had. When he got to the file room there wasn’t anyone there except the clerk who didn’t look up from his crossword, but he knew he had to walk out of the building at some point. Being there that late was sketchy on its own, but the alternative was grabbing them in broad daylight, and he didn’t have the gall or finesse for something like that.

“You wanna look through them or not?”

Barba raised an eyebrow before holding his arm out for the stack. Carisi placed them in his arm, catching an inch’s worth from the top that almost fell on the floor.

“And what’s that?” Barba asked, gesturing with his eyes at the paper bag in Carisi’s hand.

Carisi grinned, holding the bag up next to his face. “Bagels. I call dibs on the strawberry cream cheese.”

 

 

 

They divided the stack in half, separating the papers into piles by years and subject. Carisi may have dropped the stack on his bedroom floor earlier that morning and shuffled things around, which made for a riveting few hours of sorting. The morning light peered through the drawn curtain, painting the backdrop of Barba’s living room a muted gold. Barba wore a gray t-shirt with prim black sleep pants. Carisi wondered if he actually woke up like that or if in the two minutes he waited to let Carisi in and grab the vase, if he also had the wherewithal to change.

They stood in silence; every so often Carisi would read a funny name off a page or Barba would make comments about riveting state employee agreements against the shuffle of papers.

The quiet made Carisi fidget, the sound of Manhattan traffic below now bothering him like a mosquito in his ear. As in most situations where the detective was uncomfortable, he blurted out the first thing that entered his brain.

“So at what point can I stop calling you Counselor?”

Barba continued sorting, and made a considering face. “Hm. That’s fair. Barba is fine if you want.”

Carisi turned fully to Barba. “Really? I come to your house, like, three times a week and I don’t even get to call you Rafael?”

“Nope.”

Carisi waited a moment, narrowing his eyes before pointing at the counselor. “What’s the nickname I heard your mom call you that one time… Rafi, right?”

Barba did a fine job of muting the embarrassment that washed over his face. “I will not respond to that.”

Carisi gave him a dismissive wave. “I’ll figure something out, don’t worry.”

Barba looked sideways at Carisi, almost ready to interject, then went back to the paperwork. Carisi couldn’t focus on the names on the pages, eyes darting back and forth to the man beside him.

Carisi dropped the papers on the table, leaning his weight against it as he crossed his arms and looked at Barba.

It took Barba a few moments to notice, suspicion in his eyes as he leaned over the table to drop a form on a far stack.

“What?” Barba asked.

“You’re not gonna ask to call me by my first name?”

He sighed. “Carisi works for me.”

“What’s it gonna take to get you to call me Sonny?”

“I promise you that never in my life will I ever utter the word ‘Sonny’.”

“Why not?” Carisi pleaded, biting back a smile.

Barba paused, turning to him with a glint in his eye that Carisi did not like one bit. “What about _your_ first name? It’s Dominick, isn’t it?”

“Oh come on, not that. Anything but that.”

Barba grinned. “No, I think it suits you.”

Carisi rolled his eyes. “It suits a saint.”

“Dominick, pass me that stack, would you?”

Carisi groaned, straining to convince himself he was upset. He hated the name Dominick in anyone else’s mouth, but he couldn’t deny the flutter in his chest hearing Barba call him by his first name. They spent the rest of the afternoon sorting, neither complaining when one distracted the other or launched into a digression that halted the paperwork processing completely. It wasn’t that they didn’t take it seriously – Carisi wanted the bastards taken down as soon as humanly possible so Barba could live without fear – but diversions from the oppressing reality of why they could spend so much time together were hardly unwelcomed.

The morning slipped into afternoon into evening. Eating leftovers for lunch, Carisi running out to pick up dinner. He offered to make supply runs for Barba later in the weak, despite embarrassed and weakly fought protestations from the counselor. When Carisi announced that he should go, somewhere around 9:30, Barba went quiet and apologized for keeping him. Carisi waved him off, promising he’d be back before his shift on Monday to pick up the papers. Barba said he’d finish the sorting and note any information of interest the next day, free from distractions. Carisi was unable to hide his blush, a nervous laugh. Hunched against the door, whispering their goodbyes, Carisi nearly choked, heart hammering with blissful and bashful intimacy when Barba said, _So long, Dominick._ He didn’t remember how he replied, a hushed laugh and maybe a hurried and awkward _see ya_ before he ushered himself out the door into the cacophony of his own hopeful thoughts.

 

* * *

 

Carisi himself didn’t mind working Sunday nights, since it meant the morning was free for mass if he felt like going. Getting sporadic weekdays off were convenient for things like cheap matinees and hitting the gym when it was nearly abandoned. Sunday nights also tended to be quiet for crime, leaving only him and Rollins scheduled for the evening. Rollins scanned a mommy blog for a solid hour, reading out ridiculous baby names – _wait, listen to this one, ‘baby Lakeleigh had her first birthday’…_ – while Carisi struggled to catch up on paperwork yet again. His eyes darted up to the time on the bottom corner of his desktop, which was three minutes faster than the time punch clock, which was two minutes slower than the time on his phone. He could hardly keep it all straight in his head, despite the rest of the squad explaining it to him several times, and usually stayed an extra ten minutes just to be safe.

He checked his phone, waiting for a reply from Barba to his last text about Cato’s ex-partner from 2005. That was over an hour ago; Carisi figured the counselor had gotten wrapped up in the paperwork. He was aware that every text was another distraction from the real work Barba was trying to do, but he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t let Barba have the last word or let the conversation die. Carisi felt compelled to reply to every single utterance, a knee jerk reaction of babbling whatever nonsense popped into his brain in response to literally anything. The giddy nervousness was getting to him, and he suspected that Rollins suspected something was up. She only told him to stop his ‘god damn annoying as shit’ pencil tapping four times before she asked if he needed a muscle relaxer to calm down from whatever was working him up. He restrained a blush – he hoped, anyway – and tossed his pencil into his drawer to start in on chewing his nail beds. It was quieter, at least.

“C’mon, Carisi, let’s hit it.” Rollins slammed her palms down on her desk – she’d already shut off her computer and stretched out her arms, yawning loud and scrunching up her face. Carisi looked at his phone. 11:15.

“Don’t need to ask me twice.”

They gathered up their bags and walked down the hall toward the elevator, Rollins pausing halfway down and deciding to use the bathroom one last time. Carisi waited, standing awkwardly in the empty hall, half dark with the sound of a single telephone ringing somewhere back in the squad room. He looked at his phone, opened his messages, closed them again, embarrassing himself by staring at the three blue message bubbles at the bottom of the chat. He locked his phone, swinging his arms with restless energy tingling in his fingertips.

The elevator in front of him pinged, and Carisi looked up, the down arrow lit up bright in the dim hall. He heard voices before the door opened.

“Fuckin’ hell Johnny, quit dicking around! If you press another random button I swear to god–”

The doors opened to four detectives, two of whom he recognized from Vice. The one he presumed was Johnny was doubled over laughing on the right. One on the far left reached over and slapped Johnny, hitting another in the process and starting a mild scuffle between all of them. Carisi gave the group an awkward half smile before looking away.

“Getting on?” the one in the middle asked between shoves.

“Nah, waiting for someone. Go on ahead,” Carisi said.

The man shrugged, pressing at a button inside the elevator.

Carisi looked behind him, checking for Rollins as the doors closed.

“Hang on!”

Carisi turned back, the doors stuttering around an arm extended between them and reopening.

“Carisi?” Cato asked as he emerged from the corner of the elevator.

Carisi stopped himself from taking a step back. “Hey,” he said, forcing a casual smile onto his face.

“What are you still doing here?”

“Just finished my shift. I’m heading home now, just waiting for Rollins.”

The doors started to close again and Cato pressed his hand against the side, the thunk of the machinery startling in time with Carisi’s heart.

“Well hey, the boys are going out tonight. You’re in, right?” Carisi opened his mouth to protest. “Oh shut the fuck up, just come. I know you don’t have other plans on a Sunday night.”

Carisi thought they might have already started drinking by the snickering and horseplay still going on behind Cato.

“You can bring that chick you’re texting too, Mickey’s buying. Ain’t that right, Mickey?” Cato called over his shoulder, Mickey answering with something indecent.

Cato laughed and turned back to Carisi. “Get in here, let’s go.”

“I– I’ll meet you downstairs, alright?”

Cato raised an eyebrow, twisting his mouth into a disapproving line.

“Two minutes, just give me two minutes and I’ll be downstairs, alright?” Carisi felt sweat beading on the back of his neck and slapped a hand over his skin to brush it away.

“Hurry up!” Cato called with a smile as the doors closed in front of him.

Carisi exhaled long through his mouth, rubbing his brow and spinning around on his heels to face the hall.

“Who was that?” Rollins asked.

Carisi jumped as he looked up to find the detective standing in the hall, walking toward him with her arms crossed.

“Ah, that guy?” He gestured with a thumb behind him at the elevator. “Just some Vice guy.” Rollins raised an eyebrow. “He’s testifying on Emory’s case with me.”

Rollins walked ahead of him, sidling up to the elevator and pressing the down button.

“Seems like you two musta really hit it off.”

“Yeah,” Carisi cleared his throat, following after her. “He’s alright.”

The elevator came quick and they got on, silent until the doors closed.

“So, you gonna invite _that chick_ you’re texting, or what? Is she anyone I know?” Rollins asked, staring ahead at the doors.

Blood rushed to Carisi’s face. He’d hoped she hadn’t heard that.

He chuckled and coughed at the same time, hoping she’d accept a non-answer. The silence continued along with the dings of the floors passing by and Carisi couldn’t stand it.

“He’s just giving me a hard time, I’m not actually texting anyone.” Rollins didn’t respond. “I promise,” he stressed, craning his neck to see her face better.

She wasn’t convinced, but after a moment the hard lines around her mouth and eyes softened.

She looked at him sideways. “You better not go replacing me as your wingman with some good ol boy from Vice.”

Carisi laughed, for real this time, in relief. “Absolutely not. Scout’s honor.” He raised three fingers in salute.

Rollins rolled her eyes, chuckling. “Were you even an actual scout?”

“Peanut scout, I think, before I stopped.”

“Dishonorable discharge, am I right?”

The doors opened at the ground floor and they got off, bumping each other’s shoulders as they walked to the entrance.

The heat hit them full on when they walked through, sweat lifting off Carisi’s skin in waves that gave him a chill.

“Have a good night with ‘the boys’,” Rollins called, putting air quotes around her last words.

Carisi waved. “Will do. Get home safe!”

She saluted him. Carisi looked around, realizing Cato was nowhere in sight. He paused, heart thumping, going back inside to search the lobby. When he couldn’t find him, his veins thrummed with equal parts relief and dread. Spending time with Barba reminded Carisi of how apart he felt from Cato and his ilk, though assimilating into that world seemed essential to the success of their investigation. His stomach churned realizing he didn’t even have Cato’s number to text and ask where he went. As he pushed through the glass door to the outside again, he collided with another body, lurching back to realize it was none other than the man himself.

“There you are,” Cato said, brushing himself off. “Let’s get a move on, the guys are heading uptown, they just got on the train.”

Carisi hustled beside him, Cato leading the way, walking tall and carefree as he pushed past street vendors and kids drumming on buckets for change. They reached the steps heading into the subway below when Carisi felt a buzz in his pocket. He pulled out his phone, pausing as the screen lit up. Two new texts from Barba.

“You coming?” Cato called from the bottom of the stairs, face somewhere between elation and irritation.

Carisi put his phone back in his pocket and descended the steps.

 


End file.
